


The Academy, Charleston

by JaneShadow



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Americana, Atlanta, Charleston, Denver, F/F, Kansas, Martial Arts, Road Trips, Spokane, Travel, Waffles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-07 17:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16413131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneShadow/pseuds/JaneShadow
Summary: It's 2005, 2 years post-Chosen (not comic canon). Buffy and the Scoobies have established a school and training academy in Charleston SC for the newly-called slayers. Faith has been part of it all, loyally beside them in the background, but she is ready for a change and to go back out on her own. The sudden separation makes Buffy feel ways that she isn't prepared for, so she seeks the help of an old friend. Both slayers will have to travel the country to find their way.Several road trips and brief homages to American cities and towns.





	1. Chapter 1

"Maybe that girl you've noticed at school who doesn't have many friends but she's always busy with social activities. Maybe that girl you see around who has a boring job, but you know she's always traveling somewhere interesting. Maybe the girl who is stunning, fit, and single, but she has no interest in meeting someone or ever going on a date.

"They could just be shy, sure. They could easily be just a little anti-social, or maybe their jobs really are extraordinary. But let's be honest that the chances are, that girl you are thinking of is probably a slayer." Xander Harris let that last word sink in, with a dramatic flair. He looked quickly around the room at their eyes, all captivated. He saw a few nod intently, affirming his instruction.

Xander glanced with his good eye toward the clock and saw that the hour was nearly over. He grinned back at the room full of young slayers. "So remember; ask questions, and volunteer bits of information. Nothing that will give you away. Use coded language, especially in private. Ask if they like to go to the cemetary. Challenge them to arm wrestle. Pretend to be clumsy and drop something, then see if they catch it, lightning fast." He wobbled and then snatched at an imaginary object in the air, pantomiming. A few of the girls giggled. "When you have enough evidence, invite them over for a movie night. We will vet them. Or bring us your notes. Remember! Always take notes!" With that comment, he pointed toward the clock. "I won't keep you any later tonight, slayers. Go get some sleep."

The young former-potentials filed out, the few politest thanking him as they passed him at the doorway, as they did after every one of his classes. When all 15 of them were gone, Xander rubbed his hands together, smiled, took a deep breath, and sunk into his chair. He pulled a notebook out of his desk drawer and flipped it open, tapping it absentmindedly as he began to review his lesson plans.

It went without saying that the young man had found his truest calling as a teacher to the slayers. He never thought he would enjoy it as much as he did; standing in front of people and speaking sure didn't seem like his jam. Yet these weren't intimidating kids, like the jerks he had been in high school with. These weren't skeptics who challenged and criticized him, the way that his peers on construction crews had when he was in charge of delivering safety briefings once a month. These were slayers who were ready and willing to learn. These were girls who had no idea what it meant to be struck with all the power the fates (and kinda, Willow) had given them. These were passionate students who thirsted for knowledge. He was one of the Scoobies, he meant something. He knew something. It wasn't idol worship, it was trust.

There was a tap at the door and the sound of someone clearing their throat that drew Xander's attention away from his notebook.

"Hey, Al."

"You wanna try that again with a new nickname?" He snapped with a half-serious tone.

The lithe second slayer grinned widely from the doorway. "Well it's part of your REAL name, isn't it?" Faith's eyes looked toward the ceiling in thought for a brief second. "How about... X-clamation point? Or maybe you'd prefer, Waiting to X-hale?"

He tried to hide his chuckle, knowing it would only encourage her. "Are you about done, Faith No More?"

"Oh, that's original." She spouted sarcastically. "As much as I'd love to hear more of your extremely lame brain names for me, I did come here for a reason. Do you think any of those baby girls is ready for some real slaying with the big and original badasses? Buffy says it's time for nominations."

"Already? Didn't we just do that yesterday?"

"Nah, you're getting old. It's definitely time."

Xander scrunched his nose as if he were smelling something foul. He flipped back the pages in his notebook until he found the date for one month prior, the last time he had made a nomination. He reviewed each page quickly, looking for his notes on each young slayer he instructed.

Faith grew impatient but said nothing. She stepped further into the room and slunk down into a student's chair, pulling out her phone and playing with it.

"Did you already get nominations from everyone else?" Xander asked curiously, not looking up from the pages.

"Nah," she clicked away on her phone keypad, "I figure I'll start with you and validate your noms and then just 'forget' about everyone else. The other scoobs never want to talk to me, anyway."

He didn't fully believe that, but thought it was perhaps one of Faith's odd ways of complimenting him. She was pretty backhanded with her affection. He read one of his notes from a few weeks prior, then rolled it around in his thoughts before speaking out loud. "What about... Maria Hernandez? She's been showing a lot of promise."

Faith chortled. "Let me guess, she's doing great academically? Girlfriend can't throw a punch to save her life. Or to literally save someone else's. She needs a lot of work in combat skills."

"Have you tried making the fight into a formula? She can memorize like nobody's business. If she knew what to do..."

"Fighting like that works for boring slayers, like B. My girls fight like rock stars. I'll only take one out when they can throw punches uninhibited."

There was a light sound of footsteps at the doorway. Both Xander and Faith looked up with a bit of alarm, as if they had been caught in betrayal of some kind.

"So, I'm boring, now?" There the subject of conversation stood in the flesh, arms crossed, full-fledged judgement face. Her dark blonde eyebrows were down dramatically toward green eyes, glaring intensely. Buffy's gaze directed on Faith, but with a level of rage that seemed extreme in proportion to the benign comment that she had just overheard. Truly this was the reason for why the phrase "if looks could kill" was invented.

The brunette slayer shifted to the other side of her chair but otherwise appeared to let the scrutiny bounce off her. "Only when you slay, girlfriend."

This comment only served to make the air even more tense, which Xander hadn't honestly thought possible. He looked between the two women and even with only one good eye, it was entirely obvious that things were exceptionally heated between the two of them. He hadn't seen them this glare-y since well before they had all left Sunnydale, on a bus, headed toward Cleveland. That was almost 2 years ago, and Faith had been living among the scooby gang and newly called slayers in (mostly) harmony. Hell, she was even an instructor in their makeshift academy. She had tagged along as they closed yet another hellmouth in Ohio, driven south to Georgia for what turned out to be a fluke, and finally settled here, in Charleston. Obviously, it wasn't all rainbows and sunshine; Faith wasn't a 'friend' to anyone. But she contributed. She was part of the team. She and Buffy weren't enemies anymore, were they?

Xander cleared his throat subconsciously, but neither girl looked toward him. "So..." he began, his voice cracking unintentionally, "we were just reviewing my nominations. I was thinking of Maria but, maybe not. So, maybe, someone else."

"That's great," the hostile blonde seemed to be responding to Xander but still didn't even so much as glance his direction, "I hope collecting nominations isn't proving too 'boring' for Faithy, here. It's nice that she can still pretend to be helpful when it's so awful for her to be part of our team."

"I never said it was awful." Faith muttered under her breath without her usual salty wit. "If you're going to accuse me of something, at least try to be honest about it."

Something about that seemed to derail Buffy's angry resolve, or perhaps she had nothing to say. She narrowed her eyes one last time at her sister slayer, then spun on her heel. "Get me those noms tonight." She called back over her shoulder, as she basically stormed down the hallway.

The silence between the two remaining in the room was awkward, to say the least. Faith put her chin in her hand and stared toward the wall. Xander looked back down at his notes but couldn't manage to focus on the words. He kept thinking about the weird juju he had just witnessed and how uncharacteristic it had been on behalf of both slayers. Buffy might not have been cheerful and giddy since the near-apocalypse, but she definitely didn't seem _angry_ about much of anything. It took a lot to get her heated, while Faith was usually not so readily deflated. He kept glancing in her direction to see if she looked like she wanted to talk, but she seemed to be deeply concentrating on everything else in the room and the space around them.

"Did you think about... what do you think of Sarah S?" He practically whispered, and it still felt too loud.

"Yeah." Faith mumbled back. "She's ready. Thanks."

Without any discussion, the brunette rapidly got up and walked straight out the door. Typically there was a process to the nomination of ranking a slayer on five essential skills, but obviously they were not going to conduct business as usual in this instance. Xander watched the hallway through the doorframe to his classroom for a minute or two, wondering, hoping that either of the two originals would come walking back in and explain to him just what the fuck kind of bizarre shit he had just witnessed. Of course, it probably wasn't his business, but damn if he didn't still want to know.


	2. Chapter 2

In retrospect, Buffy had thought that Cleveland would be the place of reckoning. Closing a second hellmouth, when they were still so vulnerable from the collapse of Sunnydale, seemed a bit foolish. She did her best to lead their group of 32 slayers in Ohio, but all of them were inexperienced, selfish, and immature. Willow, Kennedy, Xander, Giles, and Andrew had formed a "committee" of non-slaying humans and called themselves Shield, after something that Andrew had explained to her several times, but it was still a vague comic reference that she couldn't remember. They came up with initiatives and ideas and tried to troubleshoot boring problems that kept the slayers functional, like how to pay bills.

Buffy appreciated their willingness to take care of all that, because goddess knew she had no interest or flavor for it. Shield was what allowed them to move quickly and hack Cleveland's demons off at the knees before the Ohio hellmouth had a chance to ever see them coming. It had been easy, but they had lost a few more girls. Zarana, Chloe, Helen, and Nikki had all been casualties to the cause. That was when Buffy, Shield, and a few of the more mature slayers had decided to change the way they were operating and become more organized. After Sunnydale, it had been about simply finding where the most evil was located and trying to get the upper hand through reckless attacks. They were fighting like they were a guerilla cell, without taking the time and effort to train and bring new slayers into their midst. The Academy changed all of that, for the better.

Robin had heard that Georgia was brewing with a new threat; a big bad named Lee Brown who had been southern scum as a human, and was rising to the top as a vampire. Lee was a slave-owning entrepreneur before the civil war, and had laid low in various parts of the Bible belt where he could blend in as a demon. He used his skills as a businessman and in exploitation to create a small empire of a disgusting caliber. He bought, sold, and traded humans for some of the most powerful and established vampires in the country. Lee also had a team of lackeys who propagated rumors about him, which is what eventually got him onto the radar of Robin's contacts. Word on the street was that he had bought a charm that made him tolerant to sunlight, and he could freely live among humans, mascarading as one.

Fortunately, all of these wild rumors turned out to be false, and Lee was simply another regular vamp, who happened to have a lot of friends but not a lot of power. Dusting him and everyone in his circle was light work for Buffy and the slayers. However, their trip to Georgia was eye-opening, to say the least. Perhaps it was because she had spent almost all of her life on the east coast, but Buffy had no idea how much corruption and evil existed in the heart of the American south. Sometimes she found herself asking if they were still living in the 21st century, or if they had perhaps gone through a time portal to the 1930's and were living in some cut scene from Fried Green Tomatoes. Some of it was human, which was beyond their reach; but most of it was of the demonic variety, which Buffy could practically smell. It was obvious that as much as they despised the area, they would have to stay in the south for a long time.

Robin had suggested Charleston, since it was a safe and tolerable city, centrally located, but not as embedded in corruption. Ironically, he didn't stay more than one week after they found a place to stay. Buffy couldn't say why, but he seemed perpetually unsettled, and he was always coming and going at long intervals. She couldn't say she had ever known him well enough to miss him, but it was unfortunate to lose a good warrior and ally.

Once they signed the lease on an office building and set up a storefront, Shield created their "Book of Directives". This wasn't so much a book, as it was a list on paper about the purpose of the group and what they planned to accomplish. The first directive was that all slayers would maintain their education in the day, and conduct slayer training at night. The second directive was that only nominated slayers would be selected to go out and slay, to keep fatalities at a minimum. The third directive was that what Andrew called "The Prime Directive": everyone's goal was to find more slayers. They knew that the world was full of potentials who had been called, but identifying them had not been 100% successful, even with Willow's great spellcasting abilities. They estimated that there could be as many as 40 or 50 thousand slayers in America alone. It seemed outrageous for such a high number to exist, but of course it meant that evil increased to weigh in the balance. That resulted in many girls being killed before they ever had a chance to even understand that they had been called, or what they were. If Buffy's team couldn't make contact and bring them into the fold, they might never stand a chance.

This was how they began to find a new life in Charleston, and things started to even feel like a home, sort of. Andrew managed the storefront, which was a consulting and investigations agency. Some of the girls who were out of school worked there, and it lended them opportunities to seek out other slayers. They registered the rest of the building as apartments, legitimately, so that the girls could maintain legal addresses and attend school without raising suspicion.

Faith had even found a way to fit in, though she mainly kept to herself. She wouldn't contribute to Shield, because she said she found it "too political". She wouldn't do the difficult work in the consulting agency, like filing papers or completing reports. Of course, she was more than willing to conduct field investigations, even if they weren't related to slaying. Sometimes she followed the rules and directives, but often she "forgot" about nominating slayers, or about not making full contact during combat training. However, overall she was much easier to communicate with and she did genuinely seem to try and be part of their team. Buffy never let her guard down with Faith, but she saw her as a friend more and more over time.

Everyone pitched in to teach the girls slayer skills, but also life skills. Some of them had been rather naive, and now they were expected to not only survive, but hopefully be self-sufficient, someday.

Slaying had been a challenge with the new girls. The newest students were only nominated and allowed to go on slaying missions once a month, until they proved they were ready to move up to the next level. It was almost like a karate dojo, in some regards. Faith usually took one team, and Buffy took another. If evil was heating up, Kennedy joined one of the teams, but if things seemed benign enough then Kennedy took her own team out. For that reason especially, Faith and Buffy seldom did anything together where they really talked or interacted. It was strange how much time had passed and Faith seemed to just be part of the background.

Maybe that was why she was growing unhappy with the situation. Maybe she felt overlooked and unimportant. But that didn't seem logical or probable to Buffy, because every time she saw Faith it looked as though she was quite happy, actually. She had even made friends with a few of the slayers, and they had a comic book night once a week. Of course, she was probably closest with Andrew out of everyone in the group.

Buffy had thought that when Robin left, maybe Faith would follow. They seemed to be involved at random, occasionally appearing romantic together, other times platonic. She had no idea if there was anything there, but she was surprised when Faith stuck around in Charleston. That was why Buffy felt so strongly that her darker counterpart would always be there with them. Without Robin, the only thing that Faith had was her attachment to the new slayers and her dedication to teaching them and helping them grow. That hadn't changed, so what had?

It had been two days since Andrew and Giles had come to Buffy and broke the news. Clearly they did not expect it to have any affect on her, because they delivered it as though it were a recap of a missed episode of Desperate Housewives.

"Faith has informed us that she has made a connection through Robin with a group of humans in Utah who are hunting vampires there," Giles started dryly, "they could use a slayer on their side. Naturally, they are losing numbers. She plans to buy a cheap car and go help them. We think it's a solid plan, then she can search for new slayers, and send them to us."

"Oh, great." Buffy had responded through a mouthful of cereal. She had been right in the middle of a late breakfast when the two of them interrupted her. "So how long will she be gone?"

Andrew looked at the floor. "Forever." He made a motion like wiping away a fake tear from his eye. "I'm gonna have to find myself a new comic buddy. It sucks, but I can deal. Her plan is probably more important than reading through Jinx the Elf together."

"No, really. When will she come back?" The blonde slayer had suddenly no patience.

Giles and the smaller man shared a glance.

"She isn't coming back, or at least has no plans to, Buffy." Rupert started in his serious, fatherly voice. "She thinks it is time that she went out on her own, like Robin Wood has done."

"But, no. But, we need her here. She has responsibilities. There are things that she does here that no one else does. Obviously she trains the slayers, so we need her to train the slayers. Training the slayers is the thing that we need her to do, and that she has to keep doing." Buffy paused and looked at them rather desperately. "She can go and do that for a while, but she needs to come back here and continue to help with training. Tell her she can go for a couple weeks."

Rupert Giles scratched at his chin and took a deep breath. "We can't very well tell her she must return. Why must she? She is free to come and go, just as any one of us are. Perhaps you should ask her to return, if it is important to you. She might not know that you wish her to stay."

"I want her to stay, too!" Andrew threw up his arms animatedly. "I already begged her to stay and even promised to give her my 1/6th figure of Uhura, but she said nothing would sway her. Good luck, but don't waste your breath. Nothing is more persuasive than the finest officer the-"

"I'll talk to her." The slayer blurted out quickly. She dropped her spoon into the bowl with a loud clang and abruptly took it over to the sink, tossing it in.

"Buffy, I'm sorry." Giles apologized to her as she walked past them. "We didn't think you would..." his words trailed off as he struggled to find them.

"Yeah, it's okay. Not your fault." She replied half-heartedly. "As usual, this is her fault."

Giles and Andrew weren't entirely convinced as to why this was Faith's fault, but they thought it best to leave the conversation as it was.

In two days, Buffy had been unable to directly approach Faith about staying. She was a master of the passive aggressive, and this was no exception. Faith knew better than to ask what was wrong, so she did her best to avoid the smaller blonde. They had been through enough rough patches that this seemed familiar, albeit uncommon in the days after Sunnydale. Faith thought they had cleared the air between them, but even a blind idiot could see that Buffy shot daggers with her eyes every time the darker slayer came into a room.

None of it had been so bad as the weird confrontation in Xander's classroom, which seemed to be the climax of Buffy's angry behavior. Immediately afterward, Faith had called Charles, the leader of the humans in Utah. He asked her how soon she could leave; they were losing good warriors left and right to the vamps around Salt Lake City. She couldn't find any reason in her mind to not leave that very moment, especially considering what a bitch her supposed sister slayer was being. But something in her wanted just one more night to say goodbye, so she told him she would be on the road first thing in the morning.

She packed up her belongings, which was only enough to fit into a single suitcase and a backpack. Faith had lived by the philosophy that a slayer should always be ready to bail if the worst happened, and at least move somewhere safe. She tried to teach the younger girls the same idea, but most of them clung to their possessions like their lives depended on it. Perhaps that made sense; many of them had to leave behind families already, so it was a lot to ask them to give up even more familiarity.

The southie had picked up a Honda Civic from a Craigslist ad for $650. It was a desperately sad car, but would probably last long enough to get her to SLC. She rolled her suitcase out of their building and loaded it into her "new" car, out front. Faith was manually locking the doors when she heard that old familiar voice behind her.

"So you're leaving right now? Well goodbye, I guess."

Faith pulled her head out of the vehicle and slammed the front door shut, then turned around slowly with a resigned sigh. "No, I was planning to come back in and stay tonight. Just getting my car loaded up."

Buffy looked dissatisfied with that answer. "Why bother? You obviously don't care about what we have going on, here, anymore. If you just want to leave us here, then you better get going."

"Is that why you've been acting like this? Seriously, because I've had enough with your deal. I would ask what the problem is but I'm not even sure that I care."

The slayer rolled her green eyes with exaggeration. "Obviously. These girls need you, and you are bailing on them."

"That doesn't make any sense! They have everything they need, here! We haven't found any new slayers in the Carolinas or anywhere else in driving distance for the past 3 months, B. You know that we have to start branching out farther if we are going to locate all of them. This is a perfect opportunity, and honestly we all should start going to other places to find slayers. They need me more than the girls here do. There might be girls out there, alone, dying."

It was a good point, but Buffy was relentless. "Then let's do this smarter, let's start sending teams to go on short missions to find girls, around the country. We can put together groups and rotate. Once a month, we go somewhere new, pick up a few slayers. What you are doing is just degrading the integrity of our mission!"

"We don't have a mission. We have a training facility. I've hung around for this long enough, but you know me, sis. I'm a boots on the ground kind of gal. I always have been. It's amazing that I've stuck with this as long as I have, but now it's time."

In true Buffy-fashion, she scrunched up her nose with frustration and disgust. It was futile to argue with Faith in most instances, but especially when she was right about something. The older slayer decided to try a new approach. "You can go for one week. Then you will come back."

Faith leaned back against her Civic and folded her arms indignantly. "What makes you think you can give me orders? You don't run this show, blondie."

"You have to bring the slayers back. So find the slayers, and bring them back here."

"They are slayers, not breastfeeding infants. They can board a plane in daylight by themselves and be here safely. Alone."

Miss Summers shook her head emphatically. "No, absolutely not. I am not going to allow you to risk their lives. One slayer alone is bait for trouble. A group of them, together, is going to attract every kind of evil in the country. If they die on their way here, it will be your fault." She took a step forward and pointed her finger accusingly at Faith's chest.

"So I'm a prisoner here, now? This is bullshit! I have given the last two years of my life to helping you and your friends. I put up with your little rules committee, I teach the classes you want me to teach, I went along with all your goals and shit. Where do you get off, Buffy?!"

"You can discuss this with me when you return. Here. See you then." Buffy spun on her heel and didn't leave room for her fellow slayer to respond. Before another word could be spoken, the blonde was through the door to the office building, leaving an extremely confused Faith behind.


	3. Chapter 3

Andrew made a going away cake. It wasn't anything fancy, just a plain vanilla flavored cake from a box. The best part was the frosting, which he decorated himself. He wrote "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN" in letters that covered the entire cake top. It was nerdy and terrific, and Faith loved it. She hugged and thanked him twice for being so thoughtful.

Almost everyone came to say goodbye, even though it was short notice. Of course, Buffy didn't show her face all night.

When the beer started flowing and they cracked open whiskey, it was time for the young slayers (and Giles) to get to bed. Xander and Faith had the bright idea to do shots while Willow and Dawn played anti-strip poker, a game they invented where they had to put on as many clothes as necessary. Someone broke out a guitar and the drunken tunes began. No matter how loud and off-key they yelled out bad covers of Third Eye Blind, Buffy still wouldn't emerge.

Faith wouldn't admit it to anyone, possibly not even to herself, but deep down she was wanting the other slayer to show her face so they could finish what they had started. She hated leaving things undone, and demanded resolution. Even if it was of the negative variety, it was better than walking away from tension that didn't have some kind of an ending to it.

Unfortunately she went to bed without that satisfaction. Or rather, she passed out face down on her bed, more or less. At some point in the night, she had the brilliant idea of drinking a few glasses of water. She was the lucky one; slayers rarely got hangovers. Andrew and Xander would probably be hurting for several hours late into the day.

Around 9am, Faith stirred awake. She had left her curtains open and the sun was streaming through her window, directly into her eyes, but that wasn't the only thing that caused her to wake. It was obvious to her that someone else was in her room, and even with her eyes closed, she could sense who it was. Her sister slayer sat in a large chair, a few feet away from the bed, wearing "yoga pants" and a deep scowl.

Faith made a point of stretching dramatically in her bed, reaching across the blanket. She felt her hand brush over something hard and ridged on the pillow next to her that seemed very out of place. Confused, she wrapped her hand around it and lifted her head to find she was holding a perfect replica of Lt Uhura.

"You'll bring anyone to bed, won't you." Buffy quipped dryly, without even an ounce of playfulness in her voice.

Faith mustered a slight grin the best she could, though her face was nearly too sleepy to cooperate. "You can borrow her if you like. Or maybe she's the one you're jealous of, huh?" The half-awake slayer emphasized her innuendo with a long, purposeful stretch. Her toned arms reached high over her head and she arched her back just enough to tighten her plain white tshirt against her breasts provacatively.

Buffy instantly looked away at the wall with a grunt of disgust, the upper tips of her pale ears turning slightly pink. "Don't be gross. I came in here to say I worked with Willow on a cyber-support plan for you while you are in Utah. We will be using the resources of our consultancy systems to help find probable slayers for you to check out when you get there. Also, we will need to wire you funds to buy their plane tickets, so we have an alias for you when you go to pick up the money."

The Bostonian rubbed her eyes and swallowed down a yawn. "Yeah, yeah. I already know all this stuff, babe. Giles and Andrew gave me an envelope full of instructions and wire transfer shit like... days ago. I even got a new phone set up cause mine didn't have roaming on it. Now you can reach out and touch me."

"Stop." Buffy said quietly, but her tone was completely firm.

Faith looked at her sister slayer to find her eyes locking with aggressive intensity. It set off a mild adrenaline rush in her stomach, which felt instantly like an odd form of deja vu. It was like old, foreign muscle memory, the bitterness between them that Faith hadn't seen a trace of since all the way back to the night she tried to kill Angel. Even when she left prison, even when she took the slayers out for a binge, even when she stole Buffy's body... those hadn't sent the hairs on the back of her neck quite to the level as a few select moments between them. This was one of those moments. She could feel her fists tightening under the blankets, subconsciously her body was poising for a fight.

"It isn't funny to me, that you're leaving. This isn't some joke." Buffy continued, softening slightly. "Without you, it is basically all on me to take the slayers out. Rona, Vi, Kennedy, they are barely more experienced than the rest of these babies. You and I are the best fighters and we shouldn't be..." she trailed off, shaking her head as if she were denying her own words.

"We shouldn't be, what?"

"We just shouldn't be in two different places. When there is so much to do."

Faith took a deep breath and relaxed her body, loosening her fists. It seemed the tension was subsiding enough to lower her guard. "I just don't get you. I've been here for two years, every day, teaching the noobs and not causing a fuss. You and I don't even speak, basically. I see you once a week tops, and now you wanna sell me on this whole gig that I'm so necessary to you? No one else cares that I'm leaving, B." She gestured toward the door emphatically with her extended right hand. "All your friends and compadres out there don't care. They said goodbye, high-fives all around, a few hugs, sayonara. This is cool with everyone, so what's the what? You just don't want to see me doing something good for myself, or what?"

"I do want you to do something good. I'm glad that you are helping us find slayers. I'm glad you can help this team in Boise, or wherever. I just think you're being too brash about this."

"Brash is my middle name."

Buffy sighed heavily, not in the mood for quips. She stood up from the chair and took a step toward the bed, looking down pointedly at the brunette. It was awkward, and intimidating, as she meant for it to be. Faith twitched and felt pressured to jolt up and put herself at equal ground, but resisted the urge to move.

They locked eyes for a few breaths. Buffy spoke first. "I want to know when you'll be back."

"When I'm bored. When I'm ready. When I've run of out asses to kick and baddies to kill." Faith raised one eyebrow with resolve that didn't quiver.

"That's not good enough. I want to know that you'll be back when we need you."

Her dark eyebrows raised even higher at this. "Okay, I'll be back if you need me."

"When. You will be back when we need you."

Faith didn't mean to look baffled by this statement intentionally, but it really did seem odd. She repeated it back, though she felt she genuinely didn't understand the difference. If, when, it was all the same in her mind. Yet saying it how Buffy wanted seem to be satisfying enough to the older girl and that finally put the issue to rest.

"Email me, when you get there. Or call, if you want."

"You know I hate all of those things. But sure, I'll let you know, when I'm there."

"Drive safe." Buffy said with a weak smile.

Faith almost said "you, too" but she caught herself just as she realized what she was saying, and corrected herself. "Yo-yeah, thanks. Be seein' ya."

Neither one of them really said "goodbye", but that was as close as they came.


	4. Chapter 4

To drive straight from Charleston, SC to Salt Lake City, UT, it takes about 32 hours. The first part of the drive is interesting, followed by about 20-something hours of miserable flat plateaus, grass lands, corn fields, and dirt. Eventually, you start hitting rocks and low mountains, and that feeble bit of hope that you may not want to drive off a cliff and end it all, is Utah.

Faith decided to spice up her route as much as she could, even though middle America was still going to be unavoidable, either way. She spent her first night in Nashville, trying moonshine from a mason jar in an old farmhouse-turned-barn. A woman in a plaid dress and cowgirl boots approached her after jar number 4 and asked her if she was new in town.

"I guess no one wears a tshirt and jeans around here?" Faith grumbled back. Her accent quickly gave her away.

The women grinned widely and eyed her up and down. "Only men do, honey." Then she leaned in and whispered in her drawl, "I bet you know how to do things better than they do, though."

Faith didn't mind attention from women; she was used to attracting both sexes equally, especially in cheap bars. However she had learned her lesson about women in the south. They were typically looking for dirty fucks and kept company with angry men. That combination was a red flag that even Faith didn't find worthwhile to risk. She politely brushed this one off, like all the others, though she would be lying if she said it was easy to say no. She could feel an ache deep in her jeans that hadn't been relieved for much longer than she usually tolerated. How long had it been? Maybe four months, maybe six. Robin had always been good for something without getting too emotional or expecting much of her, and after he left there were a few easy targets hanging around her favorite night clubs. But lately she'd been distracted with keeping things smooth at the Academy and paying attention to how the baby slayers were doing. It was like she was losing her touch and (goddess forbid) growing old.

She shook off that horrid thought with another moonshine and swore to herself that when she got out of the south she would find someone carefree to take to bed.

That dream didn't come true in Missouri, and it sure as hell did not come true in Kansas. She took a little detour to Wichita to see if she could find a garage when her alternator seemed to be acting up. The mechanic told her it would only be a 24 hour wait to get it fixed, which felt like an extra day too long to spend there. She asked him for recommendations and he claimed that "Wichita has the best restaurants in the country, it's a well-kept secret" which caused her to bite her tongue to keep from blurting out "horse shit". Instead, she simply nodded. His terrible opinions were not worth getting into a fight, or risk him refusing to work on her Honda. It was hard enough to find a mechanic that would touch a foreign car in the middle of Kansas.

When she checked in to her motel room, she gave Charles a call to inform him of the delay. He was out, she left a message.

Faith collapsed on her bed and flipped open her phone again, looking through her contacts to see if she had another number to reach him or anyone else in the Utah group.

Academy Main

Andrew

Buffy

Charles

Giles

Robin

Willow

It was a pretty sparse list. Andrew had programmed the contacts in and he had neglected to include any of the other slayers, probably because all of them were always going over their minutes and costing the academy a fortune in fees. Faith didn't mind his taste in getting her a new phone though; it was a RAZR and it was probably the trendiest thing she'd ever owned.

She clicked on Buffy's name and tapped out a message: "hey B, u txt?"

Faith brushed her teeth and slid out of her pants and bra, leaving her underwear and tank top on for "pajamas". She flipped open her phone and saw a message. From Buffy, it said: "Andrew says I can send 100 then txts r 25 cents. Where r u"

She grinned. This was much better than wasting the time on a phone call. "Kansass. Car getting fixed."

Within less than a minute there was a reply. "Good find slayers there too"

Her brow furrowed into a scowl at this. She couldn't possibly want to avoid human interaction with the locals more than she already did, yet this request would force her to go be chummy with them. She contemplated making a joke about how they wouldn't even want to help a slayer from Kansas, but she thought better of it. "Ok will do in AM but first sleepytime"

"Me too. Be safe."

In the morning Faith grabbed a cup of black coffee and decided to wander and chat with people. She had her extreme doubts that she would find a slayer; after all, they don't readily just come forward in the middle of the morning approaching strangers, stabbing demons and breaking cement blocks with their fists. However, she felt if she put out her best effort then she could at least tell Buffy that she had given it a shot. It seemed like a fib, but much smaller than the size of the lies she used to tell, so she wore it easily.

There was only one short street worth a damn in downtown Wichita, and she had already walked it twice without seeing anything note-worthy. There were a few cute shops, and there were absolutely restaurants. She kept chuckling to herself about how these were supposedly "the best restaurants in America" as she looked in the windows and saw typical diner decor and pubfare menus on the walls. It was a clean little city, she had to admit that. Not as much character as Cambridge or Salem, but it was easy to see there was less crime than she would find in South Boston. Of course quiet cities made for quiet slayers, and she reckoned that even at night the girls who had been called would be tucked away warm in their beds instead of out around town busting heads.

She found herself meandering into a bike shop to have a look around. Oddly, it wasn't the kind of bike she usually gravitated toward. That's right, these were of the handlebar, chain, and push-pedal variety. She thought to herself that it was more of a twisted curiosity that took her there, as she genuinely wondered how there could be enough bicycle items to fill an entire store, and not just the edge of a sporting goods section.

As she perused an aisle with dozens of patch kits in every imaginable variety, she felt her phone vibrate against her thigh. It was a foreign sensation. She could feel the store clerk's eyes on her as she reached into her pocket, probably trying to see if she was there to steal. Faith had stolen enough in the past that she knew it looked nothing like how she was behaving now, but for good measure she stepped out of the aisle and kept her hands visible. The last thing she needed was some anxious shop owner calling the cops on her.

Faith read her text message, from Buffy: "Good morn, find ne slayers?"

She wasn't sure what "ne" meant but assumed it must be "new" but with a letter left off accidentally. She typed back "Nah this place is boring and quiet. Nothing going on"

She made small talk with the shop owner, just to make sure he didn't continue looking at her like a criminal. Of course, she was a criminal, but she didn't want him to think that.

"Yeah, I'm from Boston, I just got a job out in Nevada though, so I'm moving. Was just passing through when I had a little car trouble."

He made an odd face, somewhere between recognition and confusion. "Why are you this far south?"

She stumbled over the explanation and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "I heard the restaurants here were the best in the country, no joke. I thought I'd better try a few."

"What? Who told you that?!" He broke a wide smile that traveled into his dark brown eyes, making him look genuine and softer all of a sudden. "I've been here my whole life. We have some good spots, but there's no way in heck they are the best in the country. You probably know that better than I do!"

"I think you're right. The gastropubs are nice, but they don't beat Boston."

He chuckled warmly and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the counter. Faith was pleased to see that she had managed to charm him quickly; his demeanor had gone from skeptical to friendly in just a few seconds. "I've never been to the Northeast, but it's on my list." He said with a wistful sigh. "I have been to Nevada a few times, though. What are you planning to do there? Except melt to death in that desert."

"I got a teaching job, for high school physical education. I'm also a sports coach. I guess that's what brought me in here, I thought you might have some miscellaneous sporting goods." The lie came out of her mouth easily, it was one she told frequently in Charleston when she had to explain her role at the academy or her sources of income.

"Nah, just cycling in here. Do you ride at all?"

"No, I play almost every sport under the sun, and I run, but I never really got into biking. I guess you could say I'm obsessed with women's sports, though. So maybe I'm here subconsciously. It would be the last thing for me to conquer."

The store clerk rubbed his hands together and wiggled his eyebrows playfully, as if he couldn't contain his excitement. "Well if you're ready to get set up, you're in the best place. We even have a cycling clinic every Tuesday, where we help beginners to go through learning basic maintenance for their bike. We end it with a short ride. Can you make it?"

Faith could see the conversation was steering in a direction she didn't want to take it, so she tried to bring it back under her control. "I might be able to, I was also hoping I could see some local sports while I am in town, too. Do you have any really great athletes? Anyone really exciting?" It was a long shot that had only worked to find them a slayer once before, but she figured it was the only lead she would have unless one tripped and fell into her lap.

"Exciting athletes? Well, the Wichita State Shockers are fun to watch, they might have a game going on. They've had a few boys go on to play major league, though I couldn't name them off the top of my head..."

"Any girls teams? Or really great female athletes here?"

He looked taken aback by the question but not enough to call it out for being unusual. Instead, he thought for a second. "I heard they had a girl try out for the Wichita Thunder a few months ago. That's our semi-pro hockey team. She made the newspaper and a lot of guys were pretty angry over it. I only remember because her dad is in our long riders group that meets on Thursdays, and he was complaining about how things had gotten tense at work for him, because of her."

"What was the issue?"

"Well, we've never had a girl on the hockey team, I guess. Apparently she was even better than a few of the players, but they still wouldn't take her because they just don't have gals on the team." He seemed to realize who he was talking to and blushed slightly. "No offense. I thought it was fine, just not everyone here is so open-minded, you know?"

"Sure, I know you're not like that." She reached across the counter and gently placed her hand on his forearm, reassuringly. When his brown eyes met hers, she smiled as warmly as she could force herself to muster. It was that easy. "Do you think you could tell me her name, or her father's name? I'd just love to shake her hand."

Faith had to take a taxi out to Gladys Romero's farmhouse. That was the hockey superstar. She was beginning to wonder if the issue was only partially that she was a woman who could kick all the men's asses at hockey, and if the rest of the problem was that she was a Latina. Either way, she was either one of the best damn female hockey players in middle America, or she was a slayer who didn't know what else her abilities were good for. Faith really prayed it was the latter, because the taxi ride she endured to get there was practically unbearable on account of the chatty driver, who also seemed to be high on drugs.

When she arrived, she remembered to send Buffy a text. "At potential slayer house named Gladiss. Gonna see if she is". She also remembered to try and not seem entirely creepy, but there wouldn't really be a reasonable excuse for why she had taken a cab ride 14 miles out of Wichita to the beginning scene of Wizard of Oz.

The girl who opened the door to answer Faith's knock was either a slayer, a body builder, a Marine, or perhaps all of the above. She had broad shoulders and a thick torso, packed into a plain grey tshirt. She was wearing loose basketball shorts and her calves bulged with definition. Her black hair was pulled back in a wild ponytail and her caramel skin had a light layer of sweat. On her hands were lifting gloves, as if it wasn't enough that she was already foreboding and powerful in her frame.

Faith tried not to feel intimidated, but the sensation was immediate. "Uh... Gladys Romero?"

"Maybe. Why?"

"Well, I am a reporter for the Boston Globe and I am doing a piece on female athletes in America who challenge gender norms. Or not, gender norms, but more like, they are better than male athletes. I am writing about all these women who are better at sports than men." The slayer could tell that she was not at all convincing with her pitch, so she tried to compensate. "Look, I don't really write for the Globe, but I _want_ to. I think this article could get me in. I've heard from the editor and he said if I get a good enough topic, they'll bring me on. I want to get the fuck out of Wichita, you know? This might be my shot. Can I please interview you?"

Gladys looked annoyed to the degree of being angered, and she slowly dragged her eyes up and down over Faith, as if this would help her determine her credibility. "What's your name?"

"Faith Lehane."

"That seems like the only part that is not bullshit."

Faith shifted on her feet and shrugged. "Yeah, well... then would you believe I'm just your biggest fan?"

The muscular girl shook her head slowly with determination. "Nope. You didn't even know if I was who you were looking for. You still don't. Do you work for the team?"

"The hockey team? Nah."

"Are you trying to keep my mouth shut about the players?" Gladys clenched her fists, a subtle movement. Any regular person wouldn't have noticed, but a slayer could easily see that she was poising for a fight, and Faith didn't feel like throwing down.

"Listen," the southie raised her hands slowly, "all I know about hockey is that the Bruins are the fucking best, and everyone else sucks. I didn't even know this little town had a team until I rolled in, okay? I just wanna talk to you for a few minutes. If you don't like what I have to say, I'll leave."

Gladys stepped back into her house and swung the screen door shut, creating a physical barrier between them. She crossed her arms and continued to give her unwanted guest a staredown through the screen. "You have about thirty seconds, then. You already lied to me, so don't lie again."

"Okay. I won't lie. I just want to ask you a few things, and you tell me if it sounds good to you." Faith looked for a response or encouragement, but found none, so she pressed on. "Did you have a major change in your life about 2 years ago? Did you suddenly find you were extremely strong, stronger than a regular person? Were you suddenly able to heal quickly, and recover wicked fast from things?"

"Puta, I've always been strong." Gladys mumbled from behind the screen, but there was something in her voice this time. Some uncertainty, perhaps.

"Right, I can see that. But maybe this really changed things for you and now you feel like you are meant to do even more than you have ever done. More than just play hockey, even. More than lift weights or punch bags or whatever awesome turbo-ass-kicking you were just up to, in there. If I'm wrong, then I'll walk my pretty ass back to the city and hop in my car and continue. But if I'm right, and I think I am, then you need to know that there are more girls out there like you. A lot more of us. And we want to help you, and teach you, and also show you what your power is really meant for."

There was dead silence as Gladys only blinked in response. Her face showed absolutely no emotion, whatsoever, or at least whatever it might be revealing was obscured by the screen separating them. Faith nervously tapped her index finger lightly on the side of her jeans, but otherwise remained still to give the other woman a chance to respond. It was excruciating for her to force herself not to blurt out something extreme like "wanna kill vampires with me or what?!" But she knew eventually this girl would have to reply with something. Right?


	5. Chapter 5

Denver was a logical stop, and felt like a fresh breath of solid civilization. Faith might have been a girl with simple pleasures, but she also had high standards in some regards and appreciated city life.

The conversation with Gladys along the road had helped the time pass faster. Most of their discussion was centered around how she could frame a lie to her parents well enough that they wouldn't send law enforcement looking for her, but vague enough that they wouldn't try to track her down. Gladys had used her hockey skills as a cover to say she was being drafted for semi-pros. It was obvious that she wished this lie were the real story, as perhaps that was her true dream. Faith refrained from bursting her bubble that it would only make her completely obvious to all sorts of demons and vamps if she were to use her slayer abilities for fame.

It had only required moderate convincing, which was typical with the slayers who had been on their own for 2 years. Some part of every slayer knew that they weren't "just lucky" to be this strong and powerful, suddenly. It's as if they had a tiny beacon activated inside them that they could feel, vibrating, sending signals, asking when they could finally realize their purpose. Gladys was eager to hop into a car with a total stranger and hitch a ride to Utah, only on the hopes and promise of finally understanding her purpose. Faith swore she would make that clear.

Gladys had packed her bags while Faith was retrieving her car. It took only a few hours, but by the time they arrived in Denver, it was nearly 1am.

"I can probably make it the rest of the way to Salt Lake City. You can sleep in the car." Faith tried to make it sound like a favor, though it was anything but.

"Do you not have time to find a motel here?"

The older slayer shrugged as she pulled in to a gas station. "It's more like I don't have the money for it. Buying an energy drink is much cheaper than a room. You can even lay in the backseat, I can keep myself awake."

Gladys glanced at the back of the cramped Civic but seemed resigned to the prospect of sleeping anywhere. She mumbled under her breath about how it wasn't quite the road trip she'd expected, but thought better than to voice her complaint directly. "It's a good thing you bought me dinner. Since now I'm sleeping with you."

"Sorry girlfriend, only counts if we are sleeping _together._ " Faith rattled back. Following her quip with a sly grin, she hopped out of the parked car before a reply could be made.

Stepping into the gas station, Faith quickly scoped the inside for signs of vampires or anything that felt extraordinary, as she always did entering somewhere new after dark. While it was a rather busy stop with several traveler types, none of them seemed particularly dark or interesting to her slayer senses. She took the opportunity to send Buffy another text: "stopping in Denver. Gonna power thru to SLC. Got 1 chick with me."

She figured B had probably been asleep for hours and could read that in the morning.

As she set her Red Bull on the counter along with a handful of loose change, Faith felt her phone vibrating persistently in her pocket. She mumbled a "keep the change" (all of 2 cents) as she quickly dodged away to deal with the insistent phone. To her chagrin, it was Buffy. Calling.

"Pete's Pizza we can eat pizza or you can eat Pete, this is Pete." Faith answered, tempted to giggle at herself but holding it back.

"You know that cell phones don't work this way, right?" Buffy's voice was hushed and a bit hoarse, as though she had either been asleep or nearly there. "You're an idiot. What the hell are you doing?"

Faith rolled her eyes and hoped it was somehow obvious through the phone. "What am I doing? Well you know what I'm doing because I sent you a text!" She walked to the car and glanced in the window; Gladys appeared to be asleep in the backseat already. Faith thought the better of waking her and stood next to the car, cracking open her drink.

"No, you said you are with a girl. What girl? A slayer girl? You are supposed to tell me if you find slayer girls!"

"My bad, your highness. Yeah, she's a slayer girl. You didn't think I would pick up ladies in this Honda Civic for any other reason, did you?"

There was silence from Buffy's end.

"B? Still there?"

A heavy sigh, and then, "yes. So you found one. What is happening with her, are you sending her back here?"

Faith shrugged and kept her shoulders tight. The cold air and the ice cold drink were starting to get to her. She wasn't acclimated to being out every night slaying like the old days. "Yeah, after I take her to Utah with me and make sure she's settled. She seems eager, but might get cold feet if I throw her on a plane after we just met. She doesn't know shit about you or anyone else in Charleston, y'know?"

"Good idea. Just make sure she isn't out there with you and Charles, in harm's way."

"Come on, really?" Faith retorted, a bit incredulous. "You know I treat these girls like fragile infants. They kinda are."

"Safety is not your strongest virtue. If it is a virtue. Maybe it isn't, but it really should be." With this thought, Buffy's voice raised an octave and suddenly turned accusatory. "Speaking of safety, why the hell are you driving all night? You aren't invincible to car accidents. It's one in the morning there."

"Yeah and it's three in the morning there. Why aren't you sleeping, huh?"

"You woke me up."

It was a factual statement, nothing implied. Yet for some reason, it gave Faith just the smallest inkling of butterflies for a brief moment. She shook it off. "I have an energy drink, I have the radio, I'm 6 by 6."

"Please don't tell me you said-"

"Yes, I say 6 by 6, now. It's a thing." She held back her grin because she knew, wholeheartedly, that she was being absolutely irritating and it was going to drive Buffy insane.

"I can't say I miss you. But I don't want you to die in a bloody car crash, because I'd have to hide your body from vampires. So please don't die. K?" Buffy's voice started out harsh, but her words softened as she spoke.

"Aw, B. I know you love me. I promise I'll pull off and snooze, only because I can't haunt you if I'm a ghost stuck in Colorado, can I?"

Buffy muttered a word of gratitude but was obviously trailing off and muffled, as though her entire face were covered in pillows.

"You sound asleep. Are you asleep?" Faith whispered.

There was no response.

Faith whispered again, this time a little quieter. "I'm gonna hang up now. You sleep well, slayer." She flipped her phone shut with a grin and took a long swig of her energy drink, before hopping into the driver's seat of the Civic. She meant it when she said she would pull off if she got sleepy, but figured she would at least make it a few hundred miles, first. For some reason she was suddenly feeling especially amped up, like the tingling vibes she got after a night of really epic slaying.

Faith flipped on the radio just quietly enough to not wake Gladys, and turned onto the interstate once more, just in time to see the sign: SALT LAKE CITY – 520m


	6. Chapter 6

Xander turned up the volume on his iPod and popped in his earbuds. "Run It" by Chris Brown played louder than it probably should have been, but it was enough to get him in the zone. He rubbed his hands together a few times, then reached for the free weights.

He had always been blessed to be physically fit, without much effort, but the demands of the academy required him to put in more than ever. Buffy had insisted on having a martial arts gym as well as a weight room, and Xander utilized the latter on a daily basis since they installed it. He couldn't stand the idea of seeming weak to the slayers he was there to train, even if most of his teaching was academic. Besides, working out gave him guaranteed time to go to a happy place, all alone, free from all the drama that a 24/7 boarding school full of girls had to offer.

Xander was just hitting that sweet spot of steady reps, and the right Dr Dre song was on; it was his groove. That's why the abrupt removal of his earbuds was especially jarring.

"Sorry! You couldn't hear me! Can we talk for a few about Faith?"

He slowly set down his weights and turned to his left, to see Buffy standing there, holding a coffee in one hand and his freshly removed headphone cord, in the other.

"Uh. Well I was in the middle of this." Xander stated without bitterness.

Buffy smiled wide and shrugged earnestly. "It won't take too long. I just want to fill you in, and get your perspective on something."

He swung his arms forward, going into a stretch, and took a seat on a weight bench. "Sure thing, whatever you need. What's up?"

She appeared elated that he agreed, even though she hadn't really left him much choice in the matter. Buffy effortlessly grabbed the bench press, which had a loaded weight bar still on it, and pulled it closer to Xander as if it were a dining room chair. She took a seat and leaned forward with intensity.

"Okay, so we talked on the phone last night," the slayer started, "she was in Denver at like 3 in the morning and was going to keep driving to Salt Lake."

"That sounds grueling. I probably could have transferred some money, or booked a hotel room for her. Did she not have enough to pay for a hotel?"

"I… don't know." Buffy suddenly appeared taken aback, it was clear she had not thought of this idea at all prior to this moment. "I mean, she didn't even mention wanting to go to a hotel. She just said she was good to keep driving through, I figured that she was anxious to be done traveling and get there."

"Maybe," Xander said reassuringly, "you're probably right. Let's go with that."

"Okay. Well it doesn't matter now because she texted me an hour ago and said she made it and was going to sleep with Charles. Or, not WITH Charles, you know. She was going to sleep wherever Charles had a bed or couch for her to use."

Xander's eyebrows raised with amusement. "Sure. Maybe she meant it either way. We can expect as much from Faith."

"Can we?" The blonde scoffed indignantly. "No, she's not that way anymore. That's old-Faith. She settled down with Robin and did the whole boyfriend-thing."

"I feel as if you don't pay attention to anything Faith does." Xander quipped. He said it in a kind, but corrective way.

Buffy took a slow drink from her coffee, prolonging her response, while Xander patiently waited without elaborating further. "How so? We are all here together, I see her every day. We work together."

"You do work together. That's exactly what your relationship is. I'm not saying anything bad about it, you know that Faith and I have had our… hiccups. But she's proven that she is different in plenty of ways, and that she is loyal to you. She treats us like we are her friends, and I am sure we are the closest thing to friends that she has; maybe that she has ever had. You kind of treat her like," he paused as though he were giving himself permission to speak the truth, "like a subordinate."

With this word, Buffy slanted her mouth to one side and squinted her eyes, looking incredulous. She made an audible snort and shook her head, slightly. "No, that's ridiculous. We do have directives, and those directives give me authority on a lot of decisions. But that gives me responsibility for this place beyond what everyone is expected to do. It doesn't mean anyone is my subordinate, especially Faith. She is equal to me in most ways."

"You don't have to defend anything, I'm just telling you what I've seen. Other than you checking her schedule and getting noms, I don't think I've seen you interact with her once since we left Sunnydale. She's been with us for two years."

"Shit, Xander, I didn't know this was going to turn into one of your lectures."

He held his hands up defensively, but leaned forward to hold eye contact. "Hey, no judgement. Truly. I know you and her have loads of bullshit to wade through. You don't have to like the girl, either, she's kind of an arrogant dick. I get it. But if she does decide to ever come back here, we could all do a better job of showing her that she's a necessary part of our team. Maybe we could even show her that we like her around, or find out her birthday, or something."

"Do you know her birthday? It has to be… it feels like it might be October?"

"It has to be some day within the past 2 years, that's for sure."

Buffy set down her coffee and leaned forward, putting both her hands over her face. She let out a long agitated groan of frustration. "Why is it I am always fucking up with this girl?" She asked into her palms.

"Don't give yourself all the credit, she is intentionally distant. It's like she expects us to constantly try and solve puzzles to earn her trust, and she will never give any clues. She would make the world's worst DM."

Buffy spread her fingers apart just enough to peek through them. "Is this a Dungeons and Dragons reference?"

"Sorry," Xander said sheepishly, "I forget how you hate when I make those."

"At least that one made sense, in context. When you and Andrew get going about 'saving throws' I want to stab my eyes out."

He let out a loud laugh, but refrained from responding with a counterpoint to that.

"Anyway," Buffy pulled her head away from her hands and took a short sigh, "I didn't come in her to talk to you about how I'm a shitty friend to Faith. I wanted to fill you in on her travel status, and tell you that she found a slayer already."

"Of course she did!" He proudly exclaimed. "She has a knack for spotting them. What is she gonna do with the kid?"

"Send her here, eventually. She said she wants to make sure the kid isn't skittish, first."

He shrugged and looked side to side as if debating the logic of that idea. "Sure, makes some sense. Maybe if she gets a few over there, she will bring them all back. What's her name?"

"Gladys… Knight. No, obviously it's not. It's Gladys something, and I can't think of it at the moment."

"Cool. Sounds like an old woman name. Maybe she will teach Faith about knitting and scold her for wearing halter tops in Middle America."

Buffy took a sip of coffee, but didn't miss the chance to roll her eyes at his jokes in the process. "I was thinking it might be good to call Gladys and tell her about us, to give her a chance to know us."

"Don't you think Faith will tell her all about us?"

"Yes but… she might want to get to know who we are before coming here, alone. That way if Faith doesn't come back, Gladys won't feel like she's been thrown into a new place with total strangers. That's creepy."

He grinned boyishly and made 'pistol fingers' in the air. "We're scoobies and slayers fighting demons and vampires. Everything about us is creepy. No one is gonna feel normal about this group of weirdoes. Good thing all the slayers are big weirdoes, too."

"Maybe don't tell them about your D&D campaign on the first date. We don't need to keep adding layers of the weird." Amusement flickered across Buffy's face.

Xander shrugged. "Yeah, we'll see. A lot of the girls think it's awesome. Or they will, if they ever show up to a Monday night game like they keep saying they are going to."

"Hmm," she mocked contemplation, "I think we are all busy on Monday nights with doing… any possible excuse we can think of."

Now it was Xander's turn to roll his eyes. "You know who did actually show up on a Monday? Faith. She showed up one time, and played through. Sort of. She seemed kinda into it. I was hoping she might make it a regular thing, but you know how she is about commitment. Or," he seemed to think better about choosing his words, "maybe you don't know that exactly, since you didn't see how lame her commitment to Robin actually was."

"Can we not revisit the Buffy-bashing, please? I'll try harder. If she comes back, I will give her two birthday cakes to make up for the past two years. I'll give her a big hug, though she will probably try to shoulder-check me for doing it. I'll take her out for ice cream and listen to all her thoughts and find out her favorite cereal. I'll make her a mixtape. I'll spar with her twice a week, probably." She took a hard sigh, this time her face appeared fallen instead of frustrated, and she appeared to genuinely reflect on her own words. "I miss her, sort of. It's totally dumb because when she was here, you're right, I wanted nothing to do with her. She's an arrogant dick, and it's obnoxious. I would have avoided her if I felt like I had to, but she almost never showed her face except for classes. But you know, I always knew she would show up and be there if I wanted anything. Like the background. You don't notice it's different until it's changed. Now I keep thinking of a hundred things I need to tell her about. I probably went for weeks or months without talking to her before, and now it's been three days and I feel like I'm freaking out."

Buffy stopped and looked to her friend for some kind of affirmation, but he was merely looking at her intently and nodding.

"Does that mean I'm an asshole?" She asked, almost demanding it.

"What? No. Not an asshole. I don't know what it means, honestly. Maybe you just know how much you really need her help. All of us are picking up extra duties since she left."

She shook her head rapidly. "No, it's not a need-thing. I am saying… maybe she is my friend, I think? Maybe it's just a different kind of friendship than I have with anyone else. The type where I just want my friend around and to always be there, but we don't acknowledge it?"

"I'm not an expert, but that sounds weird. And we both know if it's weird to me, it must be very weird."

Buffy sighed and tossed up her hands. "Well then, I don't understand. I am not sure why I said any of that."

"You should tell her that. Not all of it, and maybe not in the words you chose, because they sucked. But tell her that you miss her, and you realize she IS your friend, and that you can't wait for her to be back so you can do things together."

"I did tell her that!"

He narrowed his eyes pointedly. "Did you? Did you really? Or did you say something like," his tone changed into a falsetto impression of a woman, "'we need more slayers here to further the cause, and if you leave we will be subject to failure'?"

Buffy pursed her lips with admission of guilt. "Maybe."

"Yeah, I thought so. Tell her the friend stuff. What's the worst that can happen with it, Buff? She decides she hates you because you were nice to her and she decides to never return? Well, that's pretty close to what we have now."

She gave a half-smile of resignation. "I hate when you know more about something than I do."

"Nah, you already knew it. You just like to hear yourself say it out loud in front of me." He paused to smile at her warmly, then rubbed his hands together. "So… was that it? I could talk more, but I only have about an hour left to finish lifting, and shower. Don't wanna rush you but…"

Buffy was already standing up and grabbing her coffee. "No, yeah. You finish up. Thanks for taking the time, I'm sorry I kept you for so long."

"It's no problem. I am glad you let me know. It's good news that she found a slayer. Do you wanna tell Giles and Andrew, or should I?"

"I'll do it. I can head there next. You finish getting pumped up, bro." She lifted her hand up for a high five, which looked odd as her tiny palm connected with his nearly-massive hand, making him chuckle.

As she turned to walk out, Xander popped his earbuds back in, smiling to himself and picking up his weights.


	7. Chapter 7

Buffy sat behind a stack of books at her writing desk, a random few stacks of paper cluttering her workspace. At the second desk to the left of her was a large, outdated, but useful desktop computer. Around these two desks, the room was filled with books, but it was more of an office than a library. Most of the volumes were for keeping records on every slayer, tracking lesson plans, scheduling, and maintaining continuity of the academy's operations. Of course, there were a few shelves that held books for research purposes, but only those that were determined too "dangerous" for the young slayers' to peruse without supervision. These were tomes on powerful spells, demonology, and harnessing evil to control it for your own purpose (which could be good, but was most likely going to be very bad).

She spent more and more of her time in this little room, lately. It was originally meant to be Andrew's office for bookkeeping and planning, but he shifted to doing more in the common rooms, while Buffy moved further away from areas subject to social distractions. She thought to herself if this was part of why she had kept distance between her and Faith, or had that been Faith's doing? As if it could answer her question, Buffy reached over to her mobile phone and checked for signs of a text message.

Nothing.

It had been two days without a word from Faith on her progress in Salt Lake City. Buffy knew she was there, that she was working with Charles and his team, and that everything was fine. She knew this because Gladys had been in frequent contact with the Academy staff, especially Giles. There was no need to Faith to contact anyone, but Buffy wished that she would.

It had also been two days since Miss Summers had talked with Xander about her odd friendship with Faith, and she had accepted the idea that she needed to express some sentiments toward the younger slayer. Buffy had decided then that as soon as she talked to Faith next, she would let her know that she valued the friendship between them. Even if it felt super uncomfortable and daunting to do so.

But as a few days passed without a word, she doubted herself. Now the idea had sunk in and Buffy started thinking it would be humiliating, unnecessary, and make her subject to brutal rejection. Not that Faith's opinion mattered, but rejection of any kind (even from a former nemesis) was unpleasant. The whole point of her extending these friendly words was supposed to help facilitate their relationship, anyway.

It was heavier on Buffy's mind than usual, as she thumbed through one of Faith's training manuals and took notes in a Steno pad. She, Kennedy, and Vi were taking over Faith's martial arts courses and practical exams, which required a little more planning than they had expected. Buffy thought she might be able to find insight in notes that Faith had taken, even though she never ended up following her own notes and plans and improvised nearly all of her classes.

"Did you ever do a single one of these things?" Buffy asked the manual as she browsed a section titled 'How to Use Spiders for Scaring the Slayers'. It had an illustration of someone (maybe Faith?) flicking a spider toward someone else (maybe a slayer?) who was chopping the air like a ninja. The next few pages were bullet points that seemed to be proving how flinging random spiders at people would help their reflexes. If it had been instruction Faith had used, Buffy was extremely thankful she had not known anything about it until after-the-fact.

The next section seemed to be a proposed belt system so slayers could earn colored belts and eventually, black belts, like a standard martial arts school. Buffy raised her eyebrows in disbelief as she came upon a chart showing the different levels of belts, with names beside each belt. In the lower belt colors (yellow, purple, green), Faith had written the names of Andrew, Xander, and Dawn. In the upper belts (red, brown), she had written the names of several slayers who were in the original potential group, such as Kennedy, Violet, and Caridad. Around the first level of black belt she wrote "Willow? MAGIC BELT?!" then after several levels of black belts she wrote "B & F". Though the part that took Buffy aback was not the initials, but that they were surrounded by a heart. Underneath the hard in the bottom left corner of the page was what appeared to be a little ninja cupid, pointing an arrow back up to the heart.

Immediately Buffy remembered when she was in high school, and Faith drew a heart and stake on her classroom window. There was also the time that they had switched bodies, and when Buffy returned to her bedroom, she had found hearts with arrows and stakes drawn on the pages of her diaries. It was kind of a doodle theme that Faith had, and it didn't hold positive memories.

"That was ages ago." Buffy whispered to herself involuntarily, as if she needed to hear someone say it for it to be true. "Neither of you are the same person."

They were different now and she knew it, and it's what allowed her to smile fondly at the little ninja. She also appreciated that Faith had ranked them together as the highest degree of slayer. They both belonged there; not one stronger than the other, anymore.

The drawing was enough to finally push her out of her resolve. Buffy grabbed her cell phone and pounded out a text: "did you even use any of ur training manuals for ur classes? Can't find lesson info in these!"

She set the phone down and returned her attention to flipping through the manual, but within seconds she heard the telltale vibration sound. It was a near-instant reply from Faith: "quit reading my shit".

Buffy began writing a retort when a second text came through before she finished.

"I wrote dirty dreams in those, u been warned" the follow-up said.

Normally this would have annoyed her, but for some reason she chuckled at the idea and decided to play along. "Pls tell me what page number".

This time the text reply took quite a bit longer, but finally came through: "Look in the section where I taped my underwear".

"Ur dumb, no really I need help with your training lessons where are those?"

"Killing stuff call you soon"

Buffy sighed at that last message, wondering if it were even true. Odds were that was another of Faith's tactics to simply blow her off so she could avoid doing work. She flipped open a second training manual and rapidly turned the pages to see if anything stood out. She was mostly looking for an indication of a lesson plan, but part of her was curiously looking to see if a dirty dream might pop up. Nothing seemed well-organized enough to be useful, so she gave up after a short 5 minutes, deciding to go walk the grounds and check the daily class rosters.

She picked up a handful of cherries from a snack table in one of the common rooms as she headed down the hallway toward the classroom ring of the 3rd floor. Since the Academy was a converted office building, the floorplan wasn't the most logical. Some of the floors had mostly dormitories and only 1 kitchen and 1 classroom, while other floors were packed with lecture halls and study spaces. The goal had been to make each level of the building relatively uniform, but they didn't have the time or money to completely remodel in that way, so they accepted this compromise. At least now everyone was growing accustomed to the layout and understood they would need to run up and down several flights of stairs, every day.

It was in the main stairwell, headed down, that Buffy heard the familiar tones of Can't Fight the Moonlight by LeAnn Rimes. It wasn't her absolute favorite song, but she liked it well-enough and there were limited ringtones available for her phone. She stopped at the landing and took the call.

"I figured you were blowing me off, slayer." Buffy said as she answered, knowing full well who it was.

"Sorry B, can't hear very well through all the miles. Did you say you fingered me while I was blowing you? I have no memory of that."

In the background was a familiar chuckle, indicating that Gladys was with her.

"Save it for your dirty dream book!" The blonde tried to make that sound mocking but it wasn't much of an insult, she realized. "So you left all your logs and training manuals, but I am starting to think you just filled them with useless information."

"Well, maybe. I did fill them, though. That was the direction, wasn't it? No one gave specific instructions about how to do it, Shield just said we needed to use them to develop training."

"I think it's implied that you describe the training in a way that someone else could understand and replicate."

Faith scoffed audibly. "I didn't pick up on that implication at _all_. I thought I was using them to make my own notes and stuff. Why aren't you impressed that I actually used them? That was a big achievement, for me!"

Buffy was having a difficult time telling if she was being sarcastic or not. Maybe she genuinely felt proud that she used the manuals, or maybe she was trolling by filling them with nonsense. "They look okay, but I am not sure how to follow along with them. Do you think we could set up a time to call you on speakerphone or something, and go through some of the class instruction with you?"

"Yeah, sure. I am just saving the world here but otherwise I am not very busy." Another giggle that was definitely Gladys. Faith didn't laugh at her own jokes, even though she clearly found them hilarious.

"Okay. Are you busy right now? Do you have time to talk about something for five minutes?"

"I was gonna eat some cake but I can wait five minutes. Cake will probably still be delicious."

The older slayer contemplated exactly how she wanted to proceed with this conversation, for a second or two. "Okay well… am I on speakerphone or can you be alone, or something?"

"Alone? No, but hang on." There was a rustling sound that might have been Faith covering the phone, followed by some muffled voices talking back and forth for half a minute. Then more rustling, followed by "I'm alone now B, what's up?"

Buffy braced herself emotionally and tried to remember all the good points she had thought of when planning this conversation. She didn't recall any of them, which was frustrating, but she went for it, anyway. "Well I just wanted to tell you how I think you are doing great work over there. And, uh, you did a great job finding Gladys, and I think you really bring great things. So, I appreciate you."

Faith's voice sounded a bit hesitant and tense in reply. "Okay, thanks. I think I am doing pretty damn well, so that makes sense."

"You should also know that even though you are kicking ass, you really are missed, here."

At this, Faith laughed quietly. "Sure. Andrew and Xander probably want me to come back to be their cleric thing, I bet."

Buffy felt the resistance and was tempted to just give up, wish her well, and hang up. But she bared down and persisted. "You know, even if we don't talk every day or go places together, or talk about boys… or girls, I think we are kinda friends? I think you're my friend, anyway. I mean, I think of you as my friend. Because, you're part of things. You're part of our group. You're part of my group." Inwardly she was cringing repeatedly and wondering why this was so damn hard to do, and it showed in the tremor of her voice. "I just wanted to tell you this because I realized that I didn't show you that when you were here. I have been hyper focused on this school and the girls. I didn't make room or time to hang out with you. I should have done that. Can we hang out, soon?"

Faith laughed again, but in a soft, non-mocking way. "Yeah, B. You didn't have to say all that, like you're trying to ask me to prom with you or something. But thank you for saying it, anyway. We can hang out. I'll probably come back anyway, because the air quality here sucks and my whole face hurts."

Though it wasn't exactly a returned sentiment, it felt like something kind, and Buffy smiled. "Good. Thanks for hearing me out. When you come back, let's go do something fun that doesn't involve a bunch of dramatic girls, or graveyards, or writing rules and directives."

"Yeah, that would be fucking rad."

Neither woman said anything for a second, a natural pause.

"Well hey, sorry B, but there's like a dude bleeding from his eyes outside the window. I didn't wanna interrupt you but I should probably murder some motherfuckers for a bit. Charles keeps screaming so… we good?"

"Oh, gods. Wow. Yes, please go deal with that. Let's talk tomorrow?" Buffy heard a door opening and distant shouting from the other line. Faith loudly said "Yesssssssss" and then there was silence. Looking at her phone, Buffy saw the call had ended.

She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders to let go of some tension. She felt residual anxiety, but felt warm and relieved at the same time. She wondered once again why she had not said something to Faith, sooner. It had been easy enough, easier than she had expected. Buffy had to be honest with herself about the fact that Faith wasn't the harsh, insecure teenager that she expected her to be, anymore.

She tried to remember where she had been headed and why she was in the stairwell. Deciding that it didn't matter, she turned to go up the stairs and to her apartment.


	8. Chapter 8

Kennedy, Giles, Andrew, and Buffy sat around the small dining table in Buffy's kitchenette. This area of her "apartment" was more like a hotel suite than anything; it had originally been a breakroom for a tech company who'd owned the office space. It connected to a section of offices that Xander had quickly partitioned into "rooms", so Buffy could have a bedroom, living area, and miscellaneous bonus room. It was awkward to say the least, but nothing was more awkward than the fact that "her" bathroom was down the hall, and the female locker room with her nearest shower was 2 floors up. Everyone was adjusting, and sacrificing the small things was worth it for the safety and peace of mind to know they were saving slayers, training the future, and fighting horrific evil.

That was the goal of their meeting today, to get Faith on the phone and finally work through the plan for how to resume the work she had started. They had been piecing things together by asking the girls what they had been doing, but most of what they remembered was physical training. Buffy insisted that all physical training have some kind of repetition, for literal muscle memory. While free sparring was helpful, it could be done at any time and in any place. Technique could not be learned without dedicated instruction.

All 4 members of Shield (because that's how Andrew insisted they referred to themselves), reviewed notes and compared progress, before Buffy picked up the phone to place the call. She hit the Speaker button and they listened to it ring.

Faith picked up almost immediately. "Hey bestie B, how's it going? I am just trying out how that one sounds. If you don't like it, I have a few other things to try calling you. Gladys and I made a list. Did you know the beer here is fucking fake? It's fucking FAKE, B. It's basically near-beer!"

"Faith. Faith." Buffy repeated to get her attention.

"Yeah?"

"Everyone's here," she said in a mock-singing voice. "Remember? We are doing the thing!"

"Hi, Faith" the three others chimed in, simultaneously.

There was hearty laughter on the other line. "Oh yeah, I forgot that was now. Dang I thought Buffy was just calling to chat. My bad. How is everyone?"

Kennedy and Giles kept it simple and both said something affirmative and short.

"Hey, Andrew here! I am good, but I need to tell you that I am having a very difficult time planning ahead for our campaign and it would be extremely useful if you could bring back your cleric, because it would make a lot of sense for the story. We are kind of stuck at this part with a monk and no one has enough charisma to solve the puzzle." He looked around the table at the confused stares he was receiving. "What? I know I could DM around it and lower the skill check but I just think that would ruin the integrity of the challenge."

Buffy took control of the conversation and reminded everyone once again that they had an agenda to complete. She gave a brief summary of what they had sorted into notes and the ideas for physical training the group had designed. Faith stopped her several times and gave direction or clarification.

"This is a lot more grappling technique than I remember seeing." Kennedy chimed in.

"Yeah well, I kept adding more ground defense because the girls kept getting knocked on their asses." Faith replied. "I figured I had to start teaching them to fight from the floor if they were gonna live down there."

"What about just teaching them to not get knocked on their asses?" Buffy asked innocently.

Faith groaned overemphatically. "You haven't done months of drills with these kids. They are trying super hard, but it's basically like teaching taekwondo to second graders. I gave up on trying to keep them on their feet. At least a couple of them played sports and understand how to lower their center of gravity. Gladys has been pretty awesome at that, actually. The rest just fall over like bowling pins."

"Got it, more ground defense."

Kennedy asked about forms and what days of the week the slayers were supposed to test on those. That was when Faith brought up her idea about developing a belt system. Buffy whispered to Giles that she was already well-familiar with the color belts idea from Faith's training manual, so she excused herself to go use the bathroom down the hall.

"…maybe the belts are better for me to figure out when I get back, but if you wanted to get it started while I am gone, that would be fine by me. Just don't give yourself too high of a black belt or I am gonna make you test to earn it."

"Oh," Kennedy looked up at her counterparts with surprise, searching for a sign that any of them were also aware of this news, but Andrew shrugged and Giles shook his head slightly, "I didn't know the plan was for you to come back? So this is just going to be temporary?"

"Well… probably." Faith replied hesitantly. "I mean, they had only regular humans dealing with this weird eye-bleeding demon guy and all his buddies. So it seemed real crazy to them, but now that we have a couple slayers here to fight, I think it's going to be over with, soon."

Andrew clasped his hands and brought them to his mouth in pure excitement.

"How soon is real soon, to you?" Kennedy asked.

"Uh… like we've killed maybe two dozen of these, and it looks like they have another eighty or so. Then the demon so…" there was a long pause, "how long have I been here, a week? Yeah so probably, another month or two? That sounds like good math."

"It's horrible math." Andrew stated with a sour face.

"Okay, that's not a lot of time really. I think we will wait on creating the belt system until you are back here. Does everyone agree?" Kennedy looked to her two colleagues for approval, and they nodded.

The group moved on to the final topic of how to transfer money between accounts that Faith brought in for the academy. She had a knack for engines and bikes, and had been very successful at scouring private collections for valuable items, buying them for next-to-nothing, and reselling them for a huge profit. It was unsteady and unpredictable, but she loved doing it, and it brought income to the Academy that usually went toward supplemental expenses. Faith was explaining how she had a plan to gain extra money by extending her "road trip" drive back and hitting some hot spots in Texas when Buffy came back from using the restroom.

"Did I miss anything?" Buffy whispered to Giles, who raised his hand and tilted it back and forth to represent "maybe, maybe not".

Andrew gave Faith deposit instructions for how to get her cash into one of their only accounts that had a branch in the Carolinas and in Utah. He promised to look up the nearest location and send it to her.

There was a bit of small talk after everyone had wrapped up the crucial details, before Faith said she needed to get going and plan for a night raid they were doing.

Buffy hung up and looked again at Giles. "So, nothing too important when I was down the hall?"

"Well," the older man began, looking down at some notes, "did you want a description of the belt system that Faith developed?"

"No, I saw it in her books. It's pretty standard."

"Right. She also talked a little bit about her plans to return here. She thinks she could be back in one or two months time, which is better than expected."

Buffy couldn't hide her wide smile at the news. She had not yet heard of a date that Faith planned to return. "That's much better. That means we really can continue business as usual. A month isn't much time at all. Did it turn out to be no big deal over there, then?"

Giles stumbled on his words a bit, unsure of how to categorize what was and what was not a "big deal" from a slayer's perspective. He glanced to Kennedy for help.

"She said they've killed about twenty-four sidekicks and she expects there are about eighty more, plus a demon." Kennedy explained.

"EIGHTY? She thinks there are eighty of these? And a demon? That's insane!" Buffy went instantly into a completely agitated state. "What if all of them join together to get to Faith? That's a small army to fight!"

"Well, she's not totally alone, and we did know that it was a dangerous situation, over there." Kennedy reiterated quietly.

Buffy scowled, narrowing her eyes at no one in particular. "Sure, but now they know how she fights and potentially where she is. It's more dangerous if she's seeking them out and they catch on that a few slayers are around."

Kennedy looked away, clearly disagreeing but holding her tongue.

"We can see if we have any contacts who have moved near the area, they can get to Salt Lake City and provide some assistance?" Giles suggested. He was only patronizing her; if they had contacts near enough to send, they would have done so when they first heard of the problem.

His suggestion seemed to sate the slayer for the moment. "Yes, please let me know who you can find. Ask all the girls who they know in the area."

Giles nodded, picking up his notes, ready to get started. The small group stood up from the table and agreed to reconvene in a few hours in another common room. As soon as they were out of her apartment, she went straight for her cell phone.

"Ken says there are 80 vamp things and a demon? Not ok. You need to come back." She hammered out the text, then deleted it without sending. She thought it through and wrote a new text. "Sounds more dangerous there than I knew. Please be very careful." This time, she sent it.

A few minutes later, her cell chimed. The message back from Faith had no text, only two little heart emojis and a smiley face.

Buffy smiled but her eyebrows furrowed at the same time. She was learning that she had to ask Faith to do something "Please check in more often?" After hitting send, she started to busy herself by tidying up her apartment space.

The reply came quickly: "Don't worry bestie B, I'm gonna kick ass and see u soon."

Buffy didn't know, but that would be the text she would read over, and over, and over again in the upcoming days, because it was the last text she received from Faith.


	9. Chapter 9

After their phone call with Faith, Buffy spent the rest of her evening actively trying to distract herself. There was something about that conversation and the subsequent texts that left her feeling wholly unsettled. She knew it had been a very long time since she had this much anxiety over a situation, like something in her gut was telling her that everything was wrong.

All slayers had a "slayer sense" to alert them of danger, like the hair standing up on the back of one's neck. When a vampire or demon was near, it was a tiny buzzing hum deep within. Buffy had worked for years (and years), to learn how to "hear" this sense, so much so that now it was basically as loud to her as hearing someone whispering directly into your ear. Faith called this attention "the 75 decibel sense" when she trained the younger slayers on what to listen for. She said this had something to do with the level of sound that you should be able to hear, though Buffy felt that might contradict actual science.

Buffy was intensely familiar with her slayer sense; enough to know when that was not what she was experiencing. This anxiety was totally new, different, and unwanted. This was akin to when you drink far too much coffee on an empty stomach and suddenly feel waves of nausea coupled with alternating cold and hot sweats. She tried to analyze it to pinpoint the weakness so she could fight it, the same way that she approached all danger.

Maybe it was because she thought the Academy would fail without Faith to help out. Maybe it was because she thought Faith would not be able to stop the threats in Utah and the demon army would grow to a world-threatening size. Maybe it was because she was already emotional for some reason. Maybe it was almost that time of the month?

She ran through each of these ideas to see if any of them seemed to be the culprit, but nothing was sticking out. She took another approach: trying to remember what was happening in her life, the last time that she felt this way. There was truly only one time she could remember, and that was the first time she made love to Angel and he turned back to the demon Angelus. Was it that foreboding? Was there something about the situation in Utah that equaled the horrible evil that was Angelus? That seemed nearly impossible.

Thinking of Angel reminded her that he always had a way to help through these exact types of problems. It was close to midnight by now, Buffy had spent her entire night ruminating on the source of her emotions and doing tedious tasks to try and keep from sinking into panic that she felt building under the surface. It would only be 9pm in Los Angeles.

She picked up and dialed the last number she had been able to reach her dear friend and former true love. She knew it must have been almost a year since they last spoke, but she knew he would have left her with the right information to reach him if anything had changed.

"Hey, Buffy." Angel's familiar soft and calm voice came through.

"Hey, it's been a while. I know we need to catch up, but I am trying to work through something and I thought, who's the guy who can explain my own thoughts to me better than I can?"

"I thought it must be something like that for you to call me at midnight."

She paused for a moment to process that. "Is it midnight where you are? Did you leave Los Angeles?"

His voice sounded amused. "Well, yeah. Not much to stay for when a thousand demons destroy everything I had, and kill my friends. It seemed like I should move on."

He wasn't baiting her. They had talked through it all, many times. They had grieved the losses of Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn. She had been there for him (literally) when he nearly lost the war and she had helped him to regain ground. Then she had been there to give him strength to pick up the pieces, again. It was a cycle they seemed to always repeat for each other, so nothing was ever imbalanced or too much to ask.

"Where are you, then?" She asked.

"Not far from you. Relatively, anyway. Just getting settled in Atlanta. I've been here a couple months. I was hoping I could come see your Academy and help with some of the slayers, if you'd be interested. Maybe for a few weeks."

"That would be perfect, and sooner rather than later. Like, tomorrow?"

He started to respond then stopped himself. "Hmm." Just that short sound and then he continued to think. Angel was never uncomfortable with silence or waiting to think before he spoke.

"Actually, maybe I could come to see you? It would make this easier. I could use a little time away to myself. I've been doing enough here and they can get by if I duck out for a day or two." She then seemed to think better of forcing her invitation. "You can always say no, I don't mean to jump into your life without notice."

"No, that would be fine. I would love to see you. You can help me decorate my new condo to make it look like a normal human lives here."

The slayer grinned lopsidedly. "If Cordelia couldn't teach you that, then you should probably spend the next 300 years trying to figure it out for yourself, because you're a lost cause."

"There are just so many curtains."

She knew he was being fastidious and his dry wit was always welcome. Since their conversation had started, she was already feeling a relieved sense of knowing that she would unearth whatever was nagging at her, and he could find the path to solve it. That made her suddenly get a wild idea. "Hey, you aren't going to sleep anytime soon, right?"

"If you haven't learned that by now, you might need another 300 years to figure it out."

"How about I meet you for coffee. Let's say in about… five hours?"

"Sure, let's go to Waffle House."


	10. Chapter 10

Buffy had left within twenty minutes of hanging up with Angel. She had told only Dawn that she was leaving (because: sisters), and asked her to relay the information to Shield members in the morning. She assured her younger sister that it would only be a day trip, and if anyone should need her back immediately, they should call. Dawn expressed that she thought it was ludicrous to drive all night just to visit someone for a few hours, but she complied with sharing the message.

Dawn was the only person in all of the Academy who had a personal car, as she held a regular job at a bar as a server and bartender. She was not really involved in the Academy at all, though was gracious enough to "pay rent" which was well above and beyond her actual living expenses for a room in the building. She was also generous with lending out her car, giving the girls rides, or keeping the tank full for Shield needs. This was appreciated by everyone, and often the slayers showed their gratitude by cooking her meals or keeping the common area outside her apartment well-stocked with her favorite movies and snacks.

All other cars belonged to a "fleet", or rather, they were available for community use. Andrew had tried to implement a complicated inspection system that required tracking mileage and documenting such mundane things as the tire pressure before and after every trip, but he was outvoted by an overwhelming majority.

Buffy grabbed the keys to her favorite fleet vehicle, thankful that they were available. It was a 2001 Subaru Impreza. It looked a bit like a broke college student car, but it handled and drove like a dream. Buffy would sometimes go to the key box to run errands, see that the Subaru key was missing, and talk herself out of needing whatever it was she had planned to buy.

From Charleston to Augusta, time seemed to fly by. There was no traffic, very few lights along the interstate, and it felt amazing to be out on the road with the horizon stretching out ahead. She couldn't remember the last time she went somewhere alone, other than quick trips around Charleston, and even then she was never gone for more than an hour or less. She flipped through the radio, and when the FM stations seemed to get spotty, she turned to the AM. That was when she found Coast to Coast airing, and she listened to it for a solid hour. It was hilarious to hear all of the conspiracy theorists and fearful accounts of aliens, demons, and bigfoot. Buffy didn't know much about aliens or bigfoots, but she scoffed at the totally inaccurate stories of demons. One guy in particular had obviously seen a low-level vampire, perhaps one freshly turned.

In Augusta she stopped to pee and buy herself a Diet Coke. She checked her phone, there were no messages or missed calls. It had been the entire night since she had heard from Faith, which wasn't that odd since she had probably been long-asleep. Regardless, Buffy decided to send a text before getting back on the highway: "Headed to see Angel in ATL. Text me when you wake up?"

That seemed actionable enough to her, so Buffy felt satisfied that she would receive an answer. She hopped back into the Impreza and sped away on the final stretch.

Fortunately Angel had given her easy directions because there had been several Waffle Houses that she passed by. Each one made her think she was missing her exit, but she stuck to the map and directions he had described to her. She was already within the city limits of Atlanta when she spotted the final, correct place, and easily found her way to a parking spot. By her calculations there were a few more hours of darkness left so they could enjoy coffee before Angel would have to find a hide from the sun.

He was at a table waiting for her when she walked in, because: of course he was. He was immediate to jump up and throw his arms around her in a familiar, yet still forgotten, enveloping hug. She was easily taken back to flashes of memories, probably because he smelled the same as always. As he pulled back, he gave her a crooked smile and pointed to the table.

"I would have ordered something for you but I didn't know if you would want breakfast." He said, sliding into the bench seat. He gestured toward a laminated menu resting on their table. "I guess it might not be your sort of food. People seem to like it."

Buffy smiled genuinely at his thoughtfulness. "It's extremely popular down here, judging by the number that I passed before I finally found this one."

He nodded. "There is one only a few hundred feet from my new apartment. If I were hungover more often, I'd utilize it."

She followed his eyes as they glanced toward a college-age guy who looked as though he were having a particularly rough time of the morning, with his head down on the counter as he shoveled tiny waffle bites into his mouth.

"I can't say I've been there a lot, but I have been there." Buffy bemused.

As they were both semi-admiring the young man's ability to feed himself in this state, a waitress came by with a coffee pot and offered to fill them each a mug. Both obliged her, though Angel just let his sit there, all part of fitting in.

Angel brought his gaze back to the slayer, and he set both his hands on the table. "So, tell me what's going on."

Buffy took a few sips of her coffee, then set it down and looked off to the side, deep in thought. "Well… it's hard to know where to begin, because it's hard to know what's wrong. Faith left a few days ago to help in Utah, and I have been feeling off about her being gone. I thought it was just because of how busy we already are, and filling her shoes is an extreme amount of planning and delegating and straining everyone else. Then I have been realizing that I really didn't put effort into our friendship. She's been fighting alongside me since she left you in L.A.; basically no questions asked. Well, some questions asked."

"So you're friends now?"

She seemed to be choosing her words carefully, replying very slowly. "Yes. No. We are just now. I mean, I kind of asked her if we could be, and I feel like we are. I don't know about before, I've just been focused on doing what needs to be done, and I didn't pay attention to anyone. But when I think about how much time I have spent with anyone I care about in the past 2 years, I've spent equal amount with Faith. So I guess that makes her on par with Xander and Willow in my Buffy book of friends."

Angel's eyes narrowed in confusion but he didn't say anything to stop the roll she was on.

"I feel worried that she won't come back, and then she promised that she would. I am looking forward to that, because we have another chance to make everything better this time. I will know what to expect. But now I am worried she might not get through this Utah eye-blood demony thing."

"You think she's in danger she can't handle?" His voice sounded suddenly concerned, as if the meaning of this conversation were taking a turn.

"No… maybe. I am not sure. She said there are eighty sidekicks and then the demon. She could handle it if we were together, but without me, I worry they could over take her. She gets tunnel vision, sometimes."

Angel held up his hands, gently motioning them forward with palms turned upward, to motion that he had solved the puzzle with an obvious solution. "Then why don't you go there. Be there together. Make sure that the risk is gone."

"I…" she wanted to say it wasn't what Faith wanted. But wasn't it? Did she leave because she wanted to be away from everything, or had she simply left to get a break for a while? Buffy now knew firsthand how incredible and freeing it felt to be behind the wheel with somewhere to go and only the radio to keep you company. It was the kind of necessary selfishness that you were not accustomed to ever taking advantage of, when the whole world demanded you save it. Constantly. Maybe Faith needed to do something for herself, but that didn't mean that she wouldn't want a friend's help, did it?

"It seems like you know the answer to this one, Buff." He said in a softer tone. "Why don't we go together? I don't have to worry about whether or not she will be happy to see me. I already know. She will be ecstatic." His face remained serious but his eyes had a slight amusement to them.

Buffy took another drink of coffee and pulled out her cell phone as she did. There were still no messages, but she reminded herself it was even earlier in the morning, in Utah. The thought of waiting several hours to hear from Faith started to give her waves of that anxious feeling once again. It seemed the answer was pretty obvious, after all.

"Okay," she stated, setting down her mug and phone. "Who's gonna drive first?"


	11. Chapter 11

Angel had a car with special tinted windows so he could drive most of the day, though if the sun was flaring directly down at the right angle it could start to singe him. They agreed if that happened, Buffy would drive and he could move to the backseat and move around or even lay on the floor to avoid it. At night she could sleep and he would drive. That was how they planned to make it literally across the country with a few fun stops along the way, although Buffy was hoping their delays would be as brief as possible.

Once they set off, they started their time together just catching up. Angel filled in the details of his life for the past year: moving around to keep busy but also tracking smalltime demons. It was a lot like his life before Wolfram & Hart, and even before he met Buffy. He admitted that he had felt a little lost and wasn’t sure if he wanted to reengage with a group of humans, after losing Cordelia. He helped Illyria to find people who he could trust to care for her, as she experienced an identity crisis after pretending as Fred for several months. He didn’t elaborate on why he was now in Atlanta, so Buffy didn’t dig any further. She knew if he wanted to tell her, he would.

Time was flying and it felt like only an hour had gone by, when they passed through Nashville.

“Hey, pretty soon I think we’ll need to trade for a while. The sun is going to be coming through, do you mind switching?” Angel glanced out the window, judging the mid-morning sky.

“Sure, pull off wherever you can.” Buffy reached down into her bag, a basic knapsack she had thrown only a few necessities in. She would need to stop for a few things, but that could wait until they got further on toward their destination. She pulled out her phone to check it, and frowned at the screen.

Apparently her frustration was emphasized enough that it was practically audible; Angel took notice immediately. “Some bad news?”

“More like no news. I still haven’t heard anything from Faith. She usually texts me back no matter what time of day it is.” She scrolled through their last conversation, again, like she had done at least six times since the night before.

The vampire held back a smile. He pulled the car into a gravel lot, next to a farmstand selling fresh cut flowers and hot peanuts. Once he put it in park, he turned to look at Buffy, with a knowing and gentle gaze. “Why don’t you tell her?” He asked, delicately.

There was an awkwardly long pause. Buffy didn’t look up from the phone in her hand; she didn’t return her companion’s attentive look. She could feel his eyes patiently on her while she continued staring at the home screen of her cell, as if it had something more to offer her.

The blonde swallowed slowly, and shook her head so slightly it was barely a movement at all. She didn’t look up as she spoke, in a near-whisper. “What do you mean? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She knew there was no fooling him, he could read her like a book in every way. Even if she wanted to lie, she couldn’t bring herself to do it with any true effort; but of course, he had already known the answer before he even asked.

Angel’s eyes glinted with mild amusement, in his own special brand of subdued emotion. “And here I thought that you were going to need me to help you admit it to yourself.”

“It’s not- I don’t really have anything to admit.” Now the slayer met her friend’s eyes with a sincere sort of desperation, as though she were looking to him for the answer to all her confusing feelings. “I think I just don’t want her to die.”

“I’ve been in danger of death, many times.” He smiled pointedly as he said it, without accusation. “Some of those times, I was about two hours away from you. But you never dropped everything in your life to come be at my side, unless I asked.”

“Maybe that’s respect?” Her voice sounded unconvinced.

Angel raised his eyebrows and tilted his head forward towards her. “We have at least two more days in this car, together. You can spend all of it trying to convince me, and yourself, that what you feel for Faith is ‘respect’. You can continue to talk about her every five minutes, like you have been, and find excuses to bring her up, because you care so much for her safety ‘as a slayer’. Then we can get there, and you can convince her that you sped across all of America just because she’s an important part of your academy and you need her, not for yourself, but for training.”

As he spoke, Buffy’s face began to turn scarlet from her neck and upward, to the height of her cheeks. Her eyes fell once more toward her lap and she absentmindedly chewed at the skin of her lower lip.

“You can probably also convince her that you need her to come back, for the slayers.” He continued, pure softness and understanding in his voice. “She will, of course. Then you can go back to convincing yourself that she’s best in your life as a constant member of your entourage, always near you but never too close.”

He stopped, and waited, but Buffy said nothing. She let his words hang between them, in silence. It was quiet enough to hear the chatter of customers at the farmstand, laughing and visiting with the local attendant, who replied in a thick Tennessee drawl. Buffy glanced around the car at everything on the dashboard and center console, though she had seen all of it for the past several hours.

“Okay.” Angel began again, surprisingly somehow even gentler than before. “Or, you can use this time to talk to me. You know you can trust me. You know you can tell me anything. Quit trying to fight yourself on this, and tell me why you’re really so worried about her. Then when we get there, you’ll understand why you actually need her. You can tell her that, yourself. You don’t have to waste another six years pretending about it.”

At this, she rolled her eyes, the first outward reaction to anything he’d said. “No, not six years. We weren’t the same, when I met Faith. I wasn’t the same. She wasn’t like… _this._ I guess everything that happened shaped us both into who we are, now.”

“Of course it has. I have always known Faith is a good person, and worthy of redemption. She wouldn’t believe that for herself, but she has never turned down an opportunity to make things right in the universe. She would risk her life if she knew that it was the right thing to do. Just like you.”

The slayer smiled slightly and vacantly at that, still deep in thought.

“So, you haven’t felt this way for six years, I was wrong. But you aren’t denying the rest.”

Buffy shifted sideways in her seat, folding her legs underneath her. “I don’t know what I’m denying. I don’t know what I’m admitting. I hear what you’re getting at, and when you say it, it makes sense. I’m her friend now, but I don’t even know what that means. We’ve barely even just started calling each other ‘friend’. I want her to come back, and you’re right that I care about her. I think maybe I am afraid to lose anyone else in my life who matters to me, after everyone I’ve lost, already.”

His face turned immediately to a sad sympathy at this, and he tilted his head to one side. “Buffy. It’s more than that. Listen to yourself.”

She shrugged and looked out the window, staring off toward the farmstand shoppers, who were now loading up armfuls of flowers into their sedan.

Realizing it would go no further, he reached over and popped open his driver side door. “Alright,” Angel said with a sigh, “better switch and get back on the highway.”

“Yeah, hang on.” Buffy grabbed for her phone once more, and opened the text message app to Faith’s name. There were no new messages. Quickly she typed out: “Hey. Starting to worry. Call me, please?” and hit send.


	12. Chapter 12

If Buffy would have realized that Kentucky was ahead, followed by Missouri, she would have stopped a lot sooner to pee, eat, and buy the few toiletries that she needed. It turned out there was no escaping the great middle of middle America, though, and they were forced to stop off in Paducah. The goal was to switch drivers at nightfall, so Angel could take over while Buffy slept in the backseat. Even though her body was already screaming at her for holding it still far too long, she was ignoring it in favor of continuing their long journey. She bought a fleece blanket with a wolf face on it from a gas station, and curled up under it in the back, just before Kansas City.

Angel hadn’t pressed her more about Faith, since their stop at the hot peanut stand. Buffy had brought her up a few times, but he only nodded in reply. She knew the vampire had a soft spot for Faith and wouldn’t openly criticize her, but was also capable of recognizing someone’s flaws and shortcomings. He did the same thing for everyone in their lives, but especially for Buffy. It used to drive her crazy to hear someone point out her traits so easily, as if he were analyzing her and labeling her with his judgment. But over the years she had learned that he was simply observing; he wasn’t committing any person to staying stuck with their choices. He merely _noticed_ them.

As Buffy pulled the blanket up around her, she checked her phone, again. She had checked it every time they made a pit stop. She had left it in the center console when she was driving, glancing frequently to see if the message light was blinking. It wasn’t. It hadn’t. It still wasn’t, now.

She dropped it to the floor and sighed heavily, looking up at the back of Angel’s head above the driver’s seat, in front of her. “You know, I am very worried about Faith.”

“You’ve said that.” He replied, a bit muffled and distant-sounding as he kept his attention focused on the road.

“Yes, I know. That was the pretense for this trip. But I mean, I am starting to worry a huge amount. She would respond to me. She would at least text me to say that she was too busy to talk.” The blonde turned onto her back, watching red and white lights bounce off the ceiling panel. “Did you ever know that I used to be able to _feel_ her?”

Angel shook his head. It was a rhetorical question.

“Maybe I shouldn’t… it was when you and I were. You know. It might make you feel weird.” She blurted out. She suddenly felt extremely self-aware, as though she had said something awful without thinking.

“When we were together, you mean? I’ve lived over two hundred years here on earth, and was in hell maybe twice that long. I measure time in experience instead of days, now. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it feels like we were together about one hundred years ago.”

Buffy laughed uncontrollably at this, throwing her head back and tucking her knees toward her chest. She couldn’t hear if Angel was laughing as well, but she assumed he must be smiling, at least. “Okay, fine, I get it.” She said through her giggles, as she regained her ability to speak clearly. “So, you wouldn’t feel weird or jealous. Point taken.”

She took a few seconds to sit up, turn her body, and lay down again with her head on the opposite side of the car. Now she could see the vampire’s profile in the lights of the dashboard, and better assess his reactions. If he had any reactions, that is. He typically gave nothing away, but she could read even his micro expressions, most of the time.

“So,” she continued from where she had tried to begin a moment before, “when I first met Faith, I could feel her. I could feel where she was, like I can with vamps and demons. But when I feel them, it is like something cold is near me. With Faith, it was something warm. Does that make any sense?”

He nodded slightly, pensively.

“I didn’t read into it very much, I guess? She was just this ball of warm, semi-psychotic energy that bounced into our lives. I thought it was advantageous to have a sense of where she was, especially when we were slaying. It was like… she felt like warm clothes out of the dryer. Like the source of the heat isn’t really ‘on’, but the feeling is coming from somewhere, and you want to hurry and wrap them all around you and get inside them, before they go...” In the darkness of the car, Buffy’s nose crinkled reactively. “Oh, that’s maybe not an appropriate analogy. No, ew. Not what I meant.”

Angel ignored the slip-up. “You stopped feeling that?”

“Yeah. Eventually. I ignored it, over and over. When she was following the mayor, when she tried to hurt you, when she tried to hurt my friends. I used it to my advantage, to try and track her movements, but it was different.” Buffy’s eyelids started to drag each time she blinked. She stopped briefly to let out a long, satisfying yawn. “You know, when we fought, and I stabbed her, it was probably the worst. Or the best, depending on how you measure something like that. She felt like fire to me, then. I think that’s why she kissed me, because she knew it was like fire.”

“Wait, she kissed you?” He turned quickly to look over his shoulder in surprise.

“Just on the forehead. She was always too close, though. I think she was making it a game of chicken with me.”

The vampire refocused on driving, satisfied with that answer in his schema of the situation. “Well, maybe she thought you felt like warm dryer clothes, too.”

“We already established that was weird, please don’t make it weirder. I am not even sure why I try so hard to make everything into analogies when I am the fucking worst at them.”

He scoffed under his breath, but it was just loud enough for her to hear it, and pout at his confirmation.

“Anyway,” Buffy pressed, “I had to ignore it when she went into her coma. It was the strongest then, and it followed me. It felt like everywhere I went, she was always there. Instead of feeling her presence when I walked into a room, or tracking her movements when she slayed, it was like she followed me. My house, school, the library. Everywhere.”

“Do you think she was able to project herself somehow?”

The blonde thought deeply on this for a second. “No.” She finally said, decisively. “I think she was focused, on me. She was sending the message out into the world, looking for me, or whatever. I ignored it, and I didn’t use it, and I didn’t find her. So eventually, it was gone.”

Angel was nodding, reflective in his wordless response. Neither one of the traveling companions commented for a few miles, though the energy in the car made it clear that they were both still thinking on the conversation’s reveal.

It was Buffy who broke the silence, again. “Do you think I could listen for it again, and get it back?” Her voice was meek, bordering on childish in her simple question.

“That’s hard to say. It might depend on if she has it, you know, ‘activated’ for you to find it.”

Her brows furrowed tightly as she continued. “Maybe… I think she can make it louder, when she is in trouble. I am not sure if she can turn it completely off. I thought that I had hit my own kill switch to block her from finding me, several times. But she always can. I think it’s like a radio station, that way. The station is broadcasting, but you can turn off the radio, or turn the volume up and down. The reason Faith can always find me, is that she must leave her radio on all the time. I have been turned off for so long, that I’m not even sure I could find the button, anymore.”

This time, Angel stifled a chuckle.

“Oh fucking hell. Just why the fuck do I keep going with the analogies?!”

“You actually are the worst, I’m sorry.”

Buffy sighed heavily, melodramatically, on purpose. “It’s still an okay one, if I don’t bring up the buttons. I think that I could activate it again. It made us better, together, and I ruined that.”

He glanced back toward her to give her a reassuring look; a very human gesture of empathy. “There’s always more time. You can’t fix all this past history, but if you realize it now and still don’t listen to your heart, then you actually will regret it. I understand that, and I can live forever.”

“How cocky of you.” She yawned again, stretching as much as she could manage in the cramped confines of the seat.

“You made it sound like I would have been jealous about that, but it sounds like all you did was use it to locate her. Was there something else beyond the warm energy, that you’re not telling me?” His voice was direct and low. He might have even been too quiet for her to hear, if she had normal human hearing. His energy was encouraging though, not prying or curious. It was almost as if he knew all the answers, but wanted her to say them aloud, for herself to be the one to hear them.

Buffy sensed this and resisted, struggling to form the words. “Well… I m-might have. I-I said it but… I didn’t. It is mostly it, yeah.”

“Mostly?”

Her shoulders tensed as she pulled the blanket up tighter around her chest. “I could feel some things, that she felt. Only very strong things, and only when I went digging for them. Which was rare. I felt things that I didn’t expect, which was part of why I was so afraid of her. I think I would understand them now, but of course I would. We were so young, most of her response to the world was one emotion: anger. She was angry when she killed Allan Finch. She was angry when Giles wouldn’t accept her lies about it. She was angry when I tried to talk to her about it. It was all anger, and eventually rage. It was deafening to me, I didn’t want to be ripped into that darkness with her. I couldn’t imagine ever coming out of something so terrifying. It’s why I couldn’t believe that she was capable of redemption, the way that you could. I didn’t see that in her, because I had felt what she felt, and to me it seemed impossible to overcome.”

“What do you think, now?”

“Now I have been through it all. None of that surprises me.” Buffy’s voice betrayed her pangs of regret.

Angel noticed. Of course he did. “If you are able to read her feelings again like that, would it still scare you?”

“No.” It was an easy answer to say, and her own confidence surprised her. “I wasn’t going deep enough. Under all that anger, it’s just hurt. It is all pain, inside. Like a tennis ball, that has been chewed by a dog-”

“Please don’t.” His lips curled into a teasing grin.

“Fuck. Yeah. Analogies. Thank you for stopping me.” She clapped her hands together a few times in mock gratitude underneath the blanket. “Anyway, no tennis ball. She is just like, a regular ball. She’s broken, and hurt inside, and she covers all that up with fighting and with sex. I think the one thing I learned from sensing her emotions was that she isn’t even really aware of what’s deeper in there. She probably only knows what she tells herself, at the surface.”

“Do you think you really know her that well, Buffy?”

“Maybe not currently, but I know it. Maybe she’s figured it out by now, too.” She said it wistfully. She genuinely hoped that it was true, so that Faith could be spared the pain of continuing through life in the most difficult of ways, making enemies out of everyone. Buffy didn’t want that for her.

“It couldn’t have all been anger.” Angel remarked, once again knowing the answer.

Buffy subconsciously clenched her eyes shut, reaching one hand out from under the blanket to rub her face, as though she didn’t want to admit to herself what she was about to say. “It wasn’t. Some of it was sadness. Some of it was frustration. Some of it was excitement. Some of it was… angst. A lot of it was… pining.”

“For you.”

The blonde let out a long, deep breath. “Probably. It could have been.”

“You don’t have to dance around it. They aren’t _your_ feelings, you aren’t responsible for hiding them.”

“I should have tried to ignore them more.” She was still rubbing her face, and now particularly focused on the bridge of her nose. Buffy grimaced once more as if she were exposed to a bad smell that she couldn’t escape. “It scared me more than anything, you know? I barely could deal with having a boyfriend, and doing the regular, albeit with-a-vampire, girlfriend things. There was no way I knew what to do with the idea of another girl, who was also a slayer, who was a murderer and sorta crazy, having a ‘thing’ for me. I thought if I never acknowledged it, she would change her mind. I just continued to do normal girl stuff with her, to try and keep it light between us.”

“So, you telepathically friend-zoned her.” Another sly grin from Angel, who was clearly proud of himself for his modern culture reference.

“Ha, ha.” Buffy rolled her eyes and hoped he had caught it. “Sure. I did. That was the easy thing to do. But… promise you won’t judge me? I’ve never told anyone a single bit of this, not even Willow. She would freak the fuck out.”

He shot her a serious look, eyebrows raised, looking incredulous that she even had to ask.

“No judgment, right.” She braced herself and curled her body up a little tighter on top of the seat. “I liked the attention, I guess? Even though it scared me. Even though I didn’t know what to do with it. Even though I was terrified that any moment, Faith might act on it, and do something. It freaked me out so much, but I still was always looking for it. I was trying to push her just enough that, I would feel her, feeling _that_ again. You know? I would brush up against her, or lean into her, or make these faces at her that worked. I knew they worked, because I would feel her response. She was into it.” At this memory, Buffy laughed involuntarily, her nerves showing. “She must have known, because she could probably sense my feelings, too. We never talked about it, and she never stopped me. It would have been obvious, even without the weird pseudo telepathy. Though I might not have acknowledged it unless I had it staring me in the face. Which I did.”

Angel was deep in thought, mulling over his words. It was a palpable moment of measured reflection before he spoke. “Did you feel that from her again? More recently?”

Her voice is barely above a whisper. “Well, I don’t know. I can’t tell if what I get from her is actual feelings projecting or if it’s more like super-empathy. That warm sense of her is definitely gone, but sometimes I think I am picking up hints of her emotions. Kind of like hints of it at the edges. I assume it’s only when she feels strongly. Before she left for Utah, I confronted her, and I was angry with her for leaving. But there was something pushing toward me, through my anger, and it was this lonely, sad, empty pit. I think that was her.”

There wasn’t more to say, as the words hung in the air. Buffy waited expectantly to see if Angel would respond or ask her more questions. She was still listening for his voice as exhaustion took over, and she drifted off to sleep.        


End file.
